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CRITICAL REALISM 



CRITICAL REALISM 

A STUDY OF THE NATURE AND CONDITIONS 
OF KNOWLEDGE 



By 
ROY WOOD SELLARS, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the 
University of Michigan 



RAND McNALLY & COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 



Copyright, iqi6. 
By Rand McNally & Company 







#^^ 


MAY 15 1916 


S)CI,A433022 


^"1^^ J 



THE CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Setting of the Problem: Natural Realism . i 

II. Natural Realism and Science 22 

III. The Advance of the Personal . . . .1. .49 

IV. The Field of the Individual's Experience ^ . .79 
V. Distinctions within the Field 104 

VI. An Examination of Idealism 135 

VII. The Insufficiency of Mental Pluralism . . . 154 

VIII. Mediate Realisms 182 

IX. Is Consciousness Alien to the Physical? . . . 204 

X. Truth and Knowledge 254 



ni 



THE PREFACE 

The present work is an attempt to state systematically the 
essential problems of epistemology. These problems are real; they 
can be stated clearly, and they can, I am convinced, be solved. 
What (io we mean when we say that we know a thing? What are 
the conditions of such knowledge? These questions and the numer- 
ous other questions to which they lead are as empirical as any 
questions to be found in the special sciences and, so far as I can see, 
just as susceptible of being answered in a satisfactory way. But 
the individual thinker who approaches them must rid his mind of 
prejudices and be prepared to spend some time in a preliminary 
survey of the facts. He must, moreover, be willing to regard his 
conclusions as tentative and of the nature of hypotheses. Such 
is the spirit which I have tried to maintain throughout the present 
work. 

The positions which I am setting forth in the following pages 
are the summary of many years of teaching and of hard and pretty 
constant thinking, inside the class-room and without. As time 
passed, I foimd myself drifting ever more decidedly toward realism 
and naturalism. I became increasingly aware of the realistic 
structure of the individual's experience and noted those distinctions 
and meanings in which this structure was expressed. Whether 
these distinctions and meanings could be justified was the question 
uppermost in my mind. While the pressure of my reflection was 
evidently toward realism, I was dissatisfied with the customary 
realisms and felt that idealism had the better of the argument so 
far as generally accepted principles were concerned. It was at the 
very best a drawn battle between them. 

Every realist who wishes to justify the faith that is in him must 
meet the arguments of Berkeley, not only his more formal principle 
that to be for the sensible world is to be perceived, but also his 
argument from content that all objects can be analyzed into sensa- 
tions. Himie, and in our own day, F. H. Bradley, have also driven 
home to philosophy the psychical character of ever3rthing which is 
directly present in the field of experience. My knowledge of psy- 
chology and of logic made me realize the pervasive influence of 
mental activity; made me able to bear in mind the processes which 
made possible those apparently stable products which presented 
themselves to me so ready-made and external. The problem which 



vi THE PREFACE 

was formulating itself was to reach a position which would do justice 
to both the idealistic motives in experience and the realistic structure 
and meanings. Was there not some way out? Could not some 
more adequate standpoint be reached? I determined to analyze 
the nature of scientific knowledge to see whether it would give me 
a clue. 

A careful study of modem science in the light of my episte- 
mological problem did give me a clue which it took some time to 
work out. Do not both Locke and Berkeley have essentially the 
same view of knowledge ? For each of them — if there is to be 
knowledge of the physical world — it must be of the nature of direct 
or indirect apprehension. Either the physical world itself or a 
substitute copy must be present to the understanding when we 
think. Berkeley meets Locke on this ground and overcomes him. 
The physical world cannot be like our ideas; hence, we cannot 
know it. Therefore, there is no good reason to assume its existence. 

But is actual scientific knowledge an attempt to achieve images 
which faithfully copy the physical world? Does not this knowledge 
consist, instead, of propositions which claim to give tested knowledge 
about the physical world? I want the reader to get clearly in mind 
the difference of outlook which this suggestion involves. It involves 
a relinquishment of all attempts to picture the physical world. Science 
offers us measurements of things and statements of their properties, 
i.e., their effects upon us and upon other things, and of their structure; 
but it unconsciously swings ever more completely away from the 
assimiption that physical things are open to our inspection or that 
substitute copies are open to our inspection. 

This result of the study of actual scientific knowledge was illu- 
minating. I immediately saw how Berkeley's argtiments could be 
out-flanked. They were based on a conception of knowledge which 
did not hold for science. The scientist-as-such was not aware of 
the problem, nor was he in a position to see the exact bearing of his 
own results upon epistemology. That was the task of the philos- 
opher. The systematic development of this new point of view was 
the problem I set myself. Gradually a full-fledged theory of knowl- 
edge formulated itself in my mind. For want of a better name, I 
have called it Critical Realism. 

To be understood properly, Critical Realism must be connected 
with a non-apprehensional view of knowledge. Scientific knowledge 
about the physical world consists of propositions which do not 
attempt to picture it. It is upon this principle that I take my 
stand. These propositions must be tested immanently or within 
experience, but, after being so tested, they are considered as being 



THE PREFACE vii 

knowledge about that which can never be Hterally present within the 
field of experience, although it controls the elements in the field. 
But the reader will understand this position better as he follows 
the detailed argument. This much of anticipation may, however, 
act as a guide. 

My thesis is, then, that idealism and realism have had essentially 
the same view of knowledge and that the large measure of sterility 
which has accompanied philosophical controversy is due to this 
constant assumption that knowledge always involves the presence of 
the existent known in the field of experience. Philosophy limited 
itself to a controversial study of the subject-object duality and did 
not lift its eyes to the triad consisting of subject, idea-object (in 
science analyzable into propositions), and physical existent. It is to 
this triad that Critical Realism calls attention. It is my persuasion 
that this more complex form of realism does justice to the truth 
contained on both sides in the old antithesis. And it is this inclusive- 
ness as much as anything else that convinces me that I am on the 
right track. 

But my thinking has, from the first, been very much influenced 
by the mind-body problem. I have always thought that this age-old 
problem woiild be the crucial test of any philosophical s^^stem. 
There can be no doubt that constant brooding over this tantalizing 
question exerted a pressiire on me in the direction of realism and, 
at the same time, controlled my thinking. How could I obtain a 
realism without a dualism? Chapter IX gives my solution. Con- 
sciousness is a variant within those highly evolved parts of the physical 
world which we call organisms. Perhaps the most novel idea in the 
chapter is that consciousness is actually extended. I feel certain 
that the reader will find many parts of the chapter extremely interest- 
ing. I have no doubt that many critics will speak of the position 
as Materialism; I prefer to call it Naturalism. The reason for this 
preference is that Materialism has never had an adequate theory of 
knowledge back of it and, therefore, has misleading associations in 
regard to the natiire of the physical world. If the critic desires to 
follow the present liking for the word *'new" he is at liberty to call 
my position Neo-Materialism or the New Materialism. What I 
particularly desire both critic and general reader to do, however, 
is to see the solution of the mind-body problem in the light of Critical 
Realism as a theory of knowledge. 

The reader may, perhaps, be helped to grasp the rather long and 
intimately connected argument of the book if I point out its general 
movement. 

Chapter I begins with a description of the plain man's outlook, 



viii THE PREFACE 

which is called Natural Realism. The plain man believes that the 
physical thing itself is present in his field of vision. I try first to show 
how natural this belief is and then to point out fatal objections to it. 
The conclusion arrived at is that we perceive percepts, or thing- 
experiences, and not physical things. The physical world retreats 
into the background and the perceptual experience is thought of as 
under two controtSy the physical thing and the body. We begin to 
suspect that perception and knowledge are not the same, but do 
not yet know what knowledge is. 

Chapter II examines Natural Realism in the light of science and 
points out the growth of what may be called scientific realism. The 
percept and the physical thing are pretty well distinguished, but the 
reach of scientific knowledge remains vague. When the problem 
of knowledge is raised, reflective scientists divide themselves into 
at least three groups, but there is no clear consensus of opinion. 
The tendency to picture the physical world still lingers. 

Chapter III concerns itself with the Advance of the Personal. 
Both percepts and concepts are seen to be personal, and the meaning 
''commonness" gives way to *' correspondence.'' We have corre- 
spondent percepts and concepts; we do not see the same things nor 
have the same ideas. This result is entitled mental pluralism, and 
is considered a reflective level of an empirical sort to be sharply 
opposed to idealism which is a theory. 

Chapters IV and V contain analyses of the field of the individual's 
experience. The essential distinctions of what I call the coexistential 
dimension of the field are seen in the light of the temporal, or process, 
dimension. These chapters complete the empirical foundation. 

Chapter VI includes an examination of both subjective and 
objective idealism. The principles of these systems are shown to 
be fallacious. I would especially call the attention of the reader to 
the criticism of the assertion, characteristic of the objective idealist, 
that the causal category has validity only within experience. This 
assertion is shown to be ambiguous. If knowledge has a reference 
to that which is outside of the field of the individual's experience, 
the causal category, which is a part of the framework of that knowl- 
edge, must follow this reference. The error of idealism turns out 
to be the assumption that knowledge demands the presence in 
experience of that which is known. Here I make appeal to the 
triad referred to above. 

Chapter VII exhibits the inadequacy of mental pluralism-. Seven 
problems are developed in some detail to demonstrate the pressure 
within experience to the acceptance of an external control of expe- 
rience and a continuous medium within which minds live and 



THE PREFACE ix 

move and have their being. The thought of the physical world 
comes back with renewed force. 

Chapter VIII discusses certain epistemological problems of 
particular interest. I would call the attention of the reader to the 
criticism of the assumption, characteristic of panpsychism, that the 
mental cannot contain knowledge of the non-mental. This assump- 
tion is shown to rest on the idea of knowledge, cherished by Natural 
Realism, that knowledge involves the presence of the existent 
known, so that the very material of the existent must be revealed. 
Here, again, the new meaning of knowledge stands us in good stead. 
Scientific knowledge is not an intuition of the stuff of the physical 
world. Thus Critical Realism establishes itself as the only satis- 
factory hypothesis which will solve the problems raised by 
reflection. 

Chapter IX concerns itself with the mind-body problem as a 
crucial test of Critical Realism. As we have already referred to 
the conclusions drawn, we can omit any further summary. 

Chapter X is given to a study of the new meaning of knowledge 
and the experiential structure which makes extra-experiential 
reference possible. The reader will find the discussion of denotation 
particularly important. I have tried to show that there is nothing 
mysterious in the mechanism of reference; that it depends upon 
the realistic structure of the field of experience. The new meaning 
of knowledge is now seen to contain two elements: the idea-object 
which is accepted or believed, and the moment of reference. The 
idea-object is knowledge and also knowledge-about. And this knowl- 
edge is just the kind of knowledge which it purports to be. We 
can eliminate from science all attempt to intuit or picture the physical 
world. Any such tendency is a hold-over from Natural Realism. 
We have out-flanked Berkeley. One more point is taken up in 
this chapter — the meaning of truth. I try to show that truth is a 
contrast-meaning whose opposite is error. Both presuppose knowl- 
edge, but they arise as a consequence of the experience of disappoint- 
ment. Some idea-objects accepted as knowledge turn out later 
not to be knowledge. Truth is thus a purely empirical meaning 
connected with idea-objects. The criteria of truth have been 
worked out in scientific method. The study of these criteria is the 
work of the logician who really knows his science. Pragmatism 
had considerable meaning as a criticism of the vaguenesses of the 
traditional- idealisms, but it has encouraged looseness of thought. 
The reason for this is that it was not founded on an adequate theory 
of knowledge. 

The present work was completed in the spring of 19 13. Since 



X THE PREFACE 

then I have been at work on the Categories. These Categories 
represent the framework of our knowledge about the universe in 
which we Hve, and their study will constitute what is traditionally 
called Metaphysics. 

I wish to make acknowledgment to my wife for her assistance in 
proof-reading and for many helpful suggestions in regard to the 
literary side of the work. Every philosophical system depends 
upon the thinkers of the past and of the present. Where I have been 
able, I have freely acknowledged my indebtedness. I owe much 
to the intellectual atmosphere in which I have lived while doing 
this work and to the stimulus given by my colleagues at the Univer- 
sity of Michigan although none of them must be held responsible 
for any of the views herein expressed. 

Roy Wood Sellars 
' Ann Arbor 

November^ igij 



mni 



CRITICAL REALISM 



CHAPTER I 

THE SETTING OF THE PROBLEM: 
NATURAL REALISM 

PHILOSOPHY properly begins in a description of human 
experience. It must give close attention to the distinc- 
tions, meanings, and attitudes which are characteristic of 
man's natural view of the world in which he lives. Such a 
preliminary study prepares a foundation upon which the 
thinker may work. He is aware that it presents an organiza- 
tion of experience and an outlook which is the expression 
of habits and judgments slowly formed through ages. It is 
the part of wisdom, then, to examine this gradually developed 
view of nature and of man with great care in order to see what 
its principles and pre-suppositions are and to determine how 
far these are tenable. Without this empirical basis and with- 
out the respect for the accumulated insight of multitudes of 
human beings to which it testifies, the thinker, with individ- 
ual perspective founded on particular problems and facts, is 
very apt to be led astray. Reason often creates difficulties 
instead of solving them, and the history of philosophy bears 
witness to the blind vortices into which genius has at times 
thrown thought. The advance of philosophy, like that of 
science, must be gradual, and the starting-point must be the 
experience of everyday life. 

The outlook of the plain man on the world is realistic. 
He perceives what he calls physical things and reacts to them 
in appropriate ways. He believes that these physical things 
are experienced in much the same manner by all normal human 
beings and that they are evidently independent, for their 
properties and existence, of man's experience of them. All 
workers see and handle the tools which are necessary for co- 
operation. Sailors pull on the same rope; the farmer and his 



2 CRITICAL REALISM 

helpers load the same wagon with sheaves of wheat or barley- 
grown on a field which has been tilled by them year after year; 
factory ''hands'' who, for a pittance, tend the whirring 
machinery day after day, would laugh at the suggestion that 
it is less real than they who are its servants. But why 
multiply examples? To none of us does this outlook seem 
strange. Stars, rivers, mountains, tenements, street-cars, 
books — to enumerate things at haphazard — are all con- 
sidered objects which exist in a common world to which we 
must adapt ourselves. There is every reason to believe that 
these general distinctions are universal with the human race, 
although the properties assigned to particular classes of things 
vary greatly from age to age. 

^ The physical world is, then, regarded not only as common 
Nto the experiencing of all individuals but also as independent, 
1 for its existence and nature, of the individuals who experience 
(jt. It is probable that the commonness of the objects is con- 
sidered a result of their independent existence. You and I 
perceive the same tree because it is there to be perceived. 
Commonness is the inevitable consequence of a relation of 
two persons, capable of perceiving, to the selfsame existence. 
This would be, at least, the plain man's explanation of the 
fact of commonness. As we shall have occasion to note in 
another connection, commonness and independence have, 
from the genetic point of view, a more intimate relation than 
this explanation indicates ; they grow up together and reenf orce 
each other. But common sense is not necessarily aware of 
the motives and processes which lie back of its outlook and 
make it possible. Within the world of common sense, it is 
more natural to make the commonness of things a result of 
their independence than their independence a result of their 
commonness. When I am alone in my study I see things 
which I regard as independent and as real as I myself. At 
the time, they are not common, for others do not see them. 
Commonness thus seems to be a secondary characteristic of 
objects added to their independence. When we examine 
what the plain man means by ''seeing" or "perceiving," we 
find that this is of the nature of an event in which the object 
is revealed to the individual. And when we ask what is meant 



i 



NATURAL REALISM 3 

by the term * 'independence,'' we find that it signifies that 
physical things are as real as the individual who perceives 
them and that he can affect them only by overt action, 
much as one thing affects another. 

That the point of departure is the supposedly independent 
thing, is made still more evident when we examine /the plain 
man's explanation of the changes which occur in his expe- 
riences of the same thing. These are accounted for by changes 
in his relations to these objects. His experiences are func- 
tions of the unvarying object in its varying relations to him- 
self as a perceiver. Again, when an object is no longer seen, 
it is not supposed that it has ceased to exist. Physical things 
are thought of as permanent, just as individuals are, to the 
degree determined by their nature and causal connections^v^ 
It is from these assumptions as a basis that we explain their 
appearance and disappearance in our field of vision. When 
I leave my study, I take it for granted that the desk will 
remain such as it was while I was there to perceive it. As 
a matter of fact, everything countenances this belief, which 
is at the bottom of the plain man's view of the world, that 
things are existences which we perceive but which are quite 
independent of this event. Berkeley may consider this 
belief the height of abstraction, but even the most mediocre 
mind so views nature. We start from independent things, 
and not from percepts. 

This attitude toward the physical world, in which it is 
considered independent of the event of perceiving and hence 
common, may be called that of Natural Realism. Natural 
Realism is a growth, as we shall see later, but the plain man 
is not aware of the logical and factual motives which have led 
him to this position. The view is based on the exigencies of 
biological and practical life and is as natural to us as are our 
instincts. Man is outward-looking: perception as an event 
or act has an immediate object, and this is the physical thing 
which exists in a common, independent sphere whose general 
characteristics are fairly well known. While the conditions 
of this act or event are, to some extent, matters of general 
information, they are seldom reflected upon, and the 
event itself remains unique. This uniqueness and apparent 



4 CRITICAL REALISM 

directness of perception is expressed in common parlance in 
the phrase, '*Open your eyes and you cannot help seeing/' It 
is evident that the object with its associated meanings and the 
attitude which it evokes dominates the individual.' This 
dominant role played by the object is all the more inevitable 
that perception does not usually involve a consciously strained 
attention. Accordingly, grant the nature of the physical 
thing perceived, in the context of normal tendencies and 
dispositions, and any working view other than Natural 
Realism is improbable. The individual perceives things, and 
not percepts. 

This general description is true of Natural Realism in the 
primary or uncritical form in which it is the matrix of realistic 
theories of all sorts. No reflective theory of the nature of the 
event which is called perceiving, or experiencing, an object is 
as yet developed. Certainly, there is no intuition of a peculiar^ 
ego or subject as the seat of this event. What would be 
insisted upon, first of all, is the presence of the object to the 
individual. We see what is around us and the we, who see 
these things, are concrete individuals. There is nothing 
recondite or mysterious about the individual who perceives. 
To these things we can assume various attitudes accord- 
ing to our interests. We may simply observe them or we 
may handle them; but, all the while, they are out there as real 
as ourselves. Furthermore, their relations and properties 
are unchanged by our perception of them. We take them 
unawares, so to speak. We are to them as Fortunatus in the 
fairy story with his cap of darkness. They enter into no 
peculiar relation to the perceiver but are rather flooded with 
light and rendered visible. Natural Realism, in the form 
in which it is a true description of our ordinary outlook on 
nature, is a flat epistemological dualism in which there is no ! 
peculiar, non-physical relation between the individual and 
the object — the two terms of the dualism. And the term, 
epistemological, can be used here only by courtesy, since 
the personal pole is the concrete individual and not an abstract 
subject or centre of awareness. The individual, as one thing 
among others, has simply the ability to take in these other 
things along with himself. We shall find these facts, the 



NATURAL REALISM S 

absence of any peculiar ego and of any unique perceptual or 
cognitive relation, of great significance for theory of knowl- 
edge. Let us remember, however, that we possess in descrip- 
tive Natural Realism, not a theory of what takes place, but a 
statement of what appears to take place. 

It is, perhaps, at this point that we can best understand the 
objections which the plain man — and I hope others — takes 
to Berkeley's principles. Does not Berkeley assume a stand- 
point different from the natural one and argue from it as 
though it were the natural one? In other words, is he not 
perilously near what is called begging the question? He 
admits {Principles of Human Knowledge, sees. 4 and 5) 
that it is "an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men that 
houses, mountains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects 
have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being 
perceived by the understanding." This is a correct description 
of what we have designated Natural Realism. Berkeley 
asserts, however, that this position involves a manifest con- 
tradiction. ''For what are the fore-mentioned objects but 
the things we perceive by sense? And what do we perceive 
besides our own ideas^or sensations?" Evidently, Berkeley 
assumes it beyond question that we perceive, not things, but 
sensations or psychical elements concreted together. It 
follows that he has substituted idealism for the meanings and 
attitude of Natural Realism, and has argued, with this 
substitution as a basis, that things cannot exist apart from the 
act of perception. Thus, he creates a contradiction in the 
plain man's outlook which did not exist in it before. It may 
be that idealism is right, that objects are nothing but our 
ideas; but do we so consider them? Berkeley's claim that 
things are nothing but sensations forces the problem of knowl- 
edge upon us. It does not, however, prove idealism, for the 
reason that it disregards the demands of cognition because they 
seem to him to involve abstraction. His fear of abstractions 
prevented him from examining thoroughly the structure and 
distinctions characteristic of cognition. 

We have already given reasons for the belief that the thinker 
should start from the standpoint of Natural Realism. Let us 
look at this point a little more closely. Philosophy is a 



6 CRITICAL REALISM 

product of reflection. Consequently, it arises in an experience 
already organized. Its task is, therefore, set by the diffi- 
culties, within this characteristic organization, which have 
called it forth. To separate these conflicts from the context 
in which they have arisen is assuredly bad method. If they 
lead us beyond the standpoint in which they developed, good; 
but we have no right to cut ourselves loose from this stand- 
point in any arbitrary fashion. Our aim should be to remodel 
it and not simply to negate it. It is in this respect that 
Berkeley's method must fall under our condemnation. Instead 
of an immanent criticism of the structure and meanings of 
experience, he offers an airy hypothesis of a theological char- 
acter. We shall see that his criticism of Locke's notion of 
substance was valuable, although he drew the wrong con- 
clusion from it. His sensationalism, the influence of Locke, 
and his dislike of naturalism amply account for the direction 
which his own construction took. He did not distinguish 
clearly enough between perception and knowledge and was, 
therefore, led to regard his critique of Natural Realism and of 
the Lockian notion of substance as completely covering all 
forms of realism. Time has brought a more adequate analysis 
of the structure and implications of experience and has at 
last made possible a more critical form of realism than any 
of those which Berkeley attacked. 

Natural Realism as a description of the plain man's out- j 
look on nature is beyond dispute. We have seen the idealist, ' 
Berkeley, testify unwillingly to its presence. It would be an 
easy matter to point out passages in Hume which also bear 
witness to it. {Treatise, p. 202, Selby-Bigge edition.) It i 
may be that we have spent too much time in making its 1 
general tenets clear, since it is supposed to be the ordinary f 
view of the world, dominant even among philosophers when 
they are not in a reflective mood. But the justification of 
Natural Realism as a theory of knowledge is another affair, 
and appeal to the experience of the ordinary man is beside 
the point. Many facts must be organized in relation to one 
another and many conflicts settled; much that common sense 
has left vague and in obscurity must be brought into the 
light and carefully examined. Accordingly, the task is one 



NATURAL REALISM 7 

for the trained thinker. It is a mere begging of the question 
to reassert the fact to be explained and to ignore the difficulties 
which arise. 

It is not without bearing upon the problem to note how 
quickly Natural Realism was attacked by reflective thought. 
Were there no fundamental difficulties for it to face, this 
would surely not have occurred — unless, indeed, it be assumed 
that man's mind has a tendency to go astray. The relativism 
of Protagoras, for instance, was evidently a protest against the 
belief that objects are in themselves as we, the individuals or 
the race, perceive them. 

Let us now examine the more weighty reasons which have 
led the majority of modern thinkers to assert that perception is 
a mediate process and not an event in which the thing is 
revealed as it is. Since our purpose is entirely disinterested, 
the method we shall adopt will be to hear what the critics of 
Natural Realism have to say in attack and what its defenders 
can say in defense. The result should at least be a realization 
of the problem involved in perception. 

The difficulties which I wish to weigh concern, not realism 
as such, but Natural Realism. This point is important and 
should be marked, because idealists persuade themselves very 
often that they have refuted realism when they have only 
indicated inadequacies in the matrix out of which more 
critical realisms develop under the pressure of facts whose 
significance is realized by reflection. These inadequacies and 
contradictions concern (i) the fact that perception has con- 
ditions which do not appear in that which is immediately 
perceived; (2) the distinction between appearance and reality, 
a distinction which is held by the plain man along with the 
immediacy of perception, although the two cannot be recon- 
ciled; (3) the lack of concomitant variation between things 
and that which is actually perceived; (4) the difference 
between the perceptions of individuals; (5) the explanation of 
images, dream-life, and memory; (6) the synthetic or com- 
posite character of that which is perceived and the presence 
in it of inferential elements. We shall take up these topics 
in the foregoing order. 

Perception has conditions which do not appear in that which 



8 CRITICAL REALISM 

is immediately perceived. Can we reconcile the existence of 
these conditions with the plain man's view that the object 
reveals itself as it is in spite of intervening space ? Perception 
seems to involve mediatory, causal processes, yet it claims to 
be immediate. Now the most natural division of these 
mediatory processes can be made with reference to the body. 
They are external to the body, or internal. Although these 
processes are continuous, it will be best to consider them 
separately. 

External mediation of perception is quite evident in the 
case of seeing, of hearing, of smelling, and of the sense of 
temperature. Even common sense has long been aware of 
this fact, although the knowledge has not led it to alter its 
assumption that the object itself is perceived. Science has 
so completely studied the nature of these mediatory processes 
which lead to the stimulation of the sense-organs that skepti- 
cism of their existence seems misplaced. We must remember 
that science is itself based on perception and that its observa- 
tions are more systematic than those of common life. The 
object appears to be one of the conditions of its own percep- 
tion. As we shall see, this position gets us into spatial and 
temporal difficulties which are insoluble so long as we identify 
the object with that which is perceived. How, then, can that 
view be right which assumes that objects display themselves 
to the individual immediately and as they are? Let us 
remember that the plain man does not assert a duplication of 
object and corresponding percept, but believes that he is 
aware directly of the physical thing. Hume was alive to this 
fact, and his criticism of the ''philosophical hypothesis" is 
based in large measure on it. This ' ' philosophical hypothesis, ' ' 
it will be remembered, consists in the assumption that thing 
and percept are numerically different yet resemble each other. 
(Cy. Treatise, p. 202.) 

The internal medium must also affect that which is per- 
ceived. What the observer perceives depends on the focaliza- 
tion of the eye and is to that extent its function. The part 
played by the retina and the nervous system must also be 
considered, so that, to the external conditions, these internal 
ones must be added. The defender of Natural Realism may 



NATURAL REALISM g 

seek to discount the internal factors by a theory of passive 
transmission. But where is the scientific basis for such a 
view? Are not the optic nerve and brain as real as other 
physical things? If atmospheric conditions affect color, why 
should not they likewise? We do not notice their influence 
and are not able to discount it because they are always with us. 

What the critical protagonist of Natural Realism seems 
forced to admit is that he sees a portion of the world selected 
by the position of his body and the focalization of his 
eyes and somehow brought to a focus by the brain. 
However, this is not what the plain man believes that 
he perceives. He would certainly not thank his defender 
if that individual told him that what he actually per- 
ceived were temporary ''sets'' in the brain. And I am sure 
that we could not blame common sense for rejecting this 
conclusion. It is diametrically opposed to the outlook on the 
world which it has built up. Far from being that which is 
perceived, the brain is a physical thing which is seldom, if 
ever, perceived by the mass of men. In truth, the majority 
of men hardly know of its existence ; they secure their informa- 
tion of it indirectly and on the basis of other things. To 
affirm that men pass their time observing the condition 
caused in their brain by the rest of the physical world is hardly 
less palatable than idealism, and yet, to what other conclusion 
can we come if we persist in holding the view that, in per- 
ception, physical objects are immediately revealed? We 
begin with the belief that the physical object seen is out- 
side the body and we end with the proof, if not the conviction, 
that what we do actually perceive immediately is the brain as 
it is affected by the outside world through the sense-organs 
and nerves. And such a conclusion has all the marks of a 
reductio ad absurdum. The physical world with which the 
plain man starts with such assurance disappears into the part 
of it with which he is least acquainted. 

We may be told, however, that this conclusion does not at 
all follow unless it be assumed that the complex or object -in- 
its-setting which is immediately perceived be located in the 
brain. There is another possibility. The terminus ad quern 
of the complex may be the object, and not the brain. What we 



lo CRITICAL REALISM 

perceive is the object in its surroundings, and the body enters 
as simply an important part of these surroundings. Un- 
fortunately, science has shown that the object which common 
sense assumes is perceived is the terminus a quo, and not the 
terminus ad quem. Light passes from the object to the eye 
and takes time in its passage; the same is true of sound. We 
shall have occasion to show that this time-interval proves 
beyond doubt that the percept arises not in the object but at 
the brain. In line with this direction of the mediatory proc- 
esses is the fact that the body is concerned in perception, not 
simply as a body, but as a body having sense-organs and a 
peculiar internal structure.^ Other things influence the result 
because they reflect light or intercept it, and so on; but the 
perceiver's body contributes unique internal processes of 
mediation, and this internal structure seems to have no meaning 
unless the brain be the terminus ad quem of the total conditions 
of which the percept is a function. This way of escape does 
not seem open to the Natural Realist; we shall not, however, 
be dogmatic, but shall await confirmation from a study of' the 
other difficulties which confront Natural Realism. 

The distinction between a physical thing and its appearance 
to the individual is almost, if not quite, as primitive as the 
view that perception is an event in which the physical thing 
reveals itself; yet the two are hostile to each other. The 
distinction between the thing and its appearance meets us on 
every hand. When examined closely, it is found to be a 
popular recognition of the fact that objects are perceived 
differently at different times and that the difference is not 
assignable to the object. When I approach a house, what I 
perceive changes continuously; the house grows larger and 
I can see details which were not at first apparent. As I go 
away, the reverse series of changes occurs in what I perceive. 
Now I know that it took at least a year to build this house 
and that it has a stability which contradicts these changes. 
Moreover, I can apply a test through my ability to 

1 It is this direction of the stimulus which makes it imp6ssible for me to accept the position, 
held by Bergson and in another form by the "New Realists," that the percept is a selected part 
of the physical world. I am unable to see that they have made clear the mechanism of the external 
reach of the "selective response" to which they appeal. Is this not the reappearance in disguise 
of the mythological doctrine of projection which they rightly condemn? The use of a simile like 
that of the searchlight is surely not sufficient. 



NATURAL REALISM ii 

communicate with other individuals. They inform me that 
the house did not change at all either while I was approach- 
ing or while I was departing. These motives reenforce those 
already present in my natural attitude toward physical 
things. Hence, instead of saying that things change, I assert 
that their appearance to me changes. But how can I reconcile 
this assertion with my other natural belief that, in perception, 
things reveal themselves as they are ? When is the moment in 
my approach or my departure that the thing supplants the 
appearance, and the appearance the thing. Since I am aware 
of no such mysterious moment, I may well be skeptical of its 
existence. If it be stated that there is a standard position at 
which this occurs, I must ask if it is the same for all and, if 
not, why not? Upon investigation, I find that the standard 
position is rather arbitrary and is not founded upon any change 
from thing to appearance but upon practical advantages. 
The suspicion arises, as a consequence, that, the individual 
perceives only the appearances of a thing and never the thing 
itself. When this suspicion meets the information which 
science has gathered in regard to the mediatory processes which 
are the conditions of perception, it is confirmed in its skepticism 
of Natural Realism. 

Before we pass on to the other inadequacies in Natural 
Realism, let us consider a problem which arises at this point. 
Are appearances physical? If so, there are, at least in potentia, 
an infinite number of appearances for each physical thing. 
Strictly speaking, each thing when connected with an indi- 
vidual can beget a multitude of appearances, and this multitude 
can be multiplied by the number of individuals who perceive 
the object. Again, are these appearances temporary or 
permanent? If temporary and physical, we have the develop- 
ment of a dualism within the physical world. We can divide 
physical things into two classes: those which are relatively 
permanent and those which are transient. And these transient 
physical things seem not to possess any causal efficacy nor 
to be able to enter into spatial relations with the other class 
of physical things. We need, I think, hardly consider the 
possibility that appearances are physical and permanent. 
They cannot be in the space where they appear to be, for 



12 CRITICAL REALISM 

that is already preempted by the primary physical thing. To 
hold that they exist outside the body is not possible unless 
we assume that two physical bodies can occupy the same 
space at the same time. To hold that they exist in the body 
seems impossible for the same reason. Appearances are thus 
rejected by the physical world. When we remember the 
facts which point to the belief that percepts are functions 
of the brain in dynamic relation to stimulating complexes, 
the suggestion comes to mind that appearances are these 
percepts and that they must, therefore, be connected with 
the brain. But how? They are usually larger than the 
brain, and, if physical, cannot be thought of as inside it, for 
that would involve a geometrical absurdity. Either the 
defender of Natural Realism must play fast and loose with 
his conception of the physical, or appearances cannot be 
physical. On the other hand, if appearances are not physical, 
do we not have new difficulties? Can that which is not 
physical be in space? And, if not in space, can it be connected 
with physical processes as their function? 

Let us use the more common name for these appearances 
and call them percepts. By '* percept'' we shall mean only 
that which is immediately perceived by the individual and we 
shall not allow any psychological prejudice to creep into the 
term. Another expression which we shall use as synonymous 
with ' ' percept' ' is ' ' thing-experience. ' ' We shall also continue 
to assume with Natural Realism that there are things of 
which these percepts are somehow the appearances, and we 
shall not as yet inquire too curiously how we can know about 
these things if what we perceive directly are percepts. Evi- 
dently, Natural Realism is breaking down as regards its view 
that perception is an event in which things directly reveal 
themselves. That there are things we have not, however, § 
found reason to doubt. Our arguments to show the inade- 
quacy of Natural Realism are based upon their assumption. 

The lack of concomitant variation between percepts and I 
things likewise militates against the supposition that they are 
identical. Professor Stout formulates the principle thus: ''If 
anything X exhibits variations which are not shared by 
Yy X and Y must be distinct existences," Now appearance^ 



NATURAL REALISM 13 

do vary when we have every reason to beHeve that the thing 
itself does not. This table appears to me oblong, while I 
know that it is square. All that is required in order to notice 
variations in the percept which we judge are not shared 
by the thing is a little training in introspection or, rather, 
the ability to distinguish between what we actually perceive 
and what we judge we ought to see. The relative proportions 
of the sides of objects as they appear to us in our percepts 
are decidedly different from the proportions as determined 
by measurement. Now this divergence can be explained 
by the laws of optics if we grant that the percept is not identical 
with the thing. The position of the body and its distance 
from the object to which we refer the percept, enter as the 
essential factors to account for this lack of concomitant 
variation. We are confirmed in this belief when we note 
that the perspective of the image on the ground-glass window 
of a camera is similar to that of our percept which we obtain 
by looking in the same direction as that in which the camera 
is pointed. Many other variations in regard to color, size, 
and position could be noted, but these will occur readily to 
the mind of the reader. We constantly have to discount 
our percepts by means of past experience in order not to be 
misled. As a rule, this correction comes to us so naturally 
that we are hardly conscious of it, and believe that we perceive 
what is really a combination of percept and judgment. Once 
our attention is called to this state of things, however, we 
can separate the part due to present perceptual factors and 
the part due to past experience. More and more, we are 
forced to refuse to identify thing and percept. 

In our account of concomitant variation we have thus far 
paid attention mainly to spatial and qualitative differences be- 
tween the thing and its appearance; but temporal variations 
are at least as interesting and even more suggestive. We are 
informed by astronomers, for example, that a star which we 
just now perceive may have been destroyed years ago, so 
long does it take for its light to travel to us through inter- 
stellar space. How, then, can we possibly identify our percept 
with the star itself or even with a selected part of it? And 
science is led to this calculation by experiences which cannot 



T4 CRITICAL REALISM 

otherwise be harmonized. Again, the relations between our 
percepts are very frequently not the same as the relations 
between the objective occurrences themselves. Thunder 
succeeds lightning for us, but we are certain that they have 
their birth at the same time. These differences in temporal 
order can, like those of spatial character, be accounted for 
easily by reference to the existence of mediatory processes 
in space which take a measurable time to occur. Always 
we come back to the position of the individual in relation to 
other things. Since Natural Realism cannot be skeptical in 
regard to the reality of spatial position, it is forced to testify 
against its own possibility and to furnish the basis for an 
explanation of that which occurs. The result is the suggestion 
of a compromise : things are there where we judge them to be, 
but we do not perceive them. Instead, we perceive the 
percepts causally connected with them, and these percepts 
are spatially and temporally more directly related to the 
brain than to the things with which we ordinarily identify 
them. 

To get the results of our examination of the facts of media- 
tion and variation at their lowest, we may say that we have 
shown the inadequacy of the plain man's view of perception 
as a revelation or intuition. If we still hold to things, we 
can no longer identify them with their appearances to us in 
perception. Furthermore, the belief is arising in us that 
the appearances of things, although physically mediated and 
conditioned, are not themselves physical. 

The difference between the perceptions of individuals also 
points to the individual who perceives as an important factor 
in the determination of what is perceived. Yet Natural Real- 
ism in its pure form cannot admit this. What is perceived 
is for Natural Realism a thing, and not a function of various 
factors which achieve their pregnant focus in the individual, j 
But we are convinced by now that the view of perception as 
an event in which the individual is essentially passive cannot ] 
be maintained. Thus the differences between the percepts 
of individuals only accentuate a conclusion which reflection 
forces upon us. There are many facts besides color blindness 
which lead us to supoose that things appear differently to 



NATURAL REALISM 15 

individuals. We shall have occasion to enumerate these in a 
later chapter and to consider their import; at present, a 
general indication is all that is necessary. For instance, the 
testimonies of witnesses in court in regard to an event of which 
they were spectators practically always conflict. In fact, 
too great agreement is looked upon by the judge as suspicious. 
These conflicts cannot be explained away as merely errors in 
memory. In truth, past experience and the interests of the 
individual seem to play a large part in the determination of 
the percept. Hence, we are forced to make the percept a 
function not only of physical conditions, but also of what, in 
contrast, are usually termed mental conditions. Accidental 
associations, even, enter as determinants. 

When these personal elements in perception are first 
recognized, external nature seems to retreat into the distance. 
Like Narcissus, we see our own reflections and are not aware 
that they are our own. There can be no doubt that we must 
go beyond present physical stimuli to account for percepts. 
The past is somehow active, and the past is personal. We 
cannot account for many of the characteristics of our percepts 
by appeal to the ordinary, physical thing. In a parallelogram 
of forces, physics cannot introduce a moment which was but 
is no longer. The individual stands out ever more clearly 
as a most important precondition of the percept. 

But, if there be a mental element in the percept, how can 
this be combined with what Natural Realism must regard as 
the physical core of the thing ? We have already seen definite 
reasons to doubt the physical character of the appearances of 
things; this further difficulty will surely confirm us in the 
doubt. To combine what Natural Realism itself admits to be 
mental with the physical, and reach a product which appears 
to be a seamless unity, is certainly an impossible task. The 
inner sphere of consciousness asserts itself as a constitutive 
element in what at first claimed to be physical. And I do not 
see how the plain man's view of the physical — or the scientist's 
either, for that matter — ^^can admit such a coalescence. Yet 
the presence of the mental factor is so undeniable that 
M. Bergson, for instance, speaks of the union of memory with 
the pure percept. Training and insight are necessary before the 



1 6 CRITICAL REALISM 

pure percept can be recovered from the sediment deposited 
on it by the flow of the spirit. Truth, so far as the percept 
is concerned, Ues behind us instead of before us. I fear that 
the antiquarian often constructs as well as recovers, and 
M. Bergson's outlook on inorganic nature shows evident signs 
of a knowledge of mathematical rationalism. We must, 
however, again remind ourselves that he does not start with 
the plain man's realism but with a realism strangely tinctured 
with idealism. He, therefore, experiences less difficulty with 
the coalescence of the object and of memory elements than 
would otherwise be possible. If, however, there exist insuper- 
able difficulties for the view that percepts are in things, as we 
have tried to show, his compromise does not seem to have 
an adequate basis. 

How can Natural Realism account for the existence of images 
and of memory? If perception be merely an event in which the 
thing reveals itself, can it be supposed to leave a trace of its 
revelation behind ? I do not see that such a position furnishes 
the basis for an explanation of memory or of the presence, 
under the individual's control, of images. If percepts are 
physical, are images so likewise? And where can they exist? 
Now, the plain man does not for a moment consider images to be 
physical. Here, then, is another inadequacy in his position of 
which he is not aware. He accepts images much as he accepts 
physical things and does not ask too curiously how they are 
causally or existentially related. It is the cognitive value of 
images to which attention is almost exclusively paid. So far 
as the question is asked in his hearing, he acquiesces in the 
view usually advanced that images are the effects of the action 
of things upon the mind. But this involves the acceptance of 
mediatory processes, as we have already indicated, and turns us 
in the direction of no longer considering perception as a mere 
event in which the individual is passive. There is, moreover, 
no reason to assume — and again, common sense does not 
assume — that images and memories are dimmer presences 
when objects are far off. They are too much under our 
control and too variable. Berkeley, who claimed to represent 
the plain man, saw this difference and emphasized it as a basic 
principle in his philosophy. He does not. however, give a 



NATURAL REALISM 17 

satisfactory explanation of the existence of images; instead, 
he takes them for granted. But he can appeal to the con- 
tinuity of the spirit as a basis for memory. So long as per- 
ception is merely an event, and the thing, physical, this cannot 
be done. Again, if we suppose images to be under the direct 
control of physical things as some defenders of Natural Realism 
do, how can we harmonize this with the well-known laws of 
association, retention, and reproduction? 

Again, if images are looked upon as physical creations 
which linger after the object to which they correspond has 
disappeared from our horizon and even has ceased to exist, 
they must be subject to physical laws. Yet it seems absurd 
to apply such laws as those of gravitation to them. Instead, 
psychological laws describe their behavior and control. They 
are essentially private and, in this respect, differ from primary 
physical things. Furthermore, imagination is productive as 
well as reproductive: we possess and create synthetic objects 
which have no counterpart in nature. Do images, like chem- 
ical elements combine to produce something new? I take it 
to be obvious that common sense and psychology have adopted 
the simpler classification when they have adjudged images to 
be mental and personal. The query which then remains as a 
stumbling-block to Natural Realism when it becomes reflective 
is. How can they be explained unless a new view of perception 
be developed? 

Now, common sense accepts results and does not, as a 
rule, ask how they are possible. For instance, perception is 
somehow clearer each time that we see an object and the 
more that we know about it — and that is all. Again, the 
plain man gets along very nicely with the assumption that he 
can somehow pass back and forth between things and ideas, 
between the world out there and thoughts referred more or less 
vaguely to the body. Dualism there is, but a dualism with 
no terrors. These factors are somehow present together, and 
they can be attended to simultaneously or successively. 
Their coexistence, and the fact that the attention can pass 
from one sphere to the other, does not itself prove that they 
are of one fundamental kind; rather, it suggests what other 
difficulties have forced us to assume. But togetherness is not 



i8 CRITICAL REALISM 

the whole story; these types melt into one another and merge 
their being. Ideas join with that which is perceived, and the 
new body which arises from their conjugation faces the 
individual with all the old pride of independence. Such 
effrontery on the part of bodies which we know to be hybrids 
arouses in us grave doubts of the primitive character of the 
rest. And this brings us to the last contradiction which 
confronts Natural Realism. 

Percepts show the results of education and inference; they 
are constructs instead of passim intuitions. They are modifi- 
able in new situations and thus keep in touch with things under 
whose control they always remain to some extent; but they 
have a history, and the time-factor is necessary for their 
comprehension, as it would not be were they intuitions. The 
sensational nucleus, namely, that which can be accounted for 
largely by the immediate relation of the individual to the 
physical complex outside the body, is often — one might 
venture to say always for the adult — a minimum. The 
percept may even be contrary to what should be seen, granted 
— what Natural Realism admits — the permanence of things. 
It is because of the silent and unobtrusive presence of these 
inferential elements in the percept that we do not notice the 
different ways in which the same thing appears to us at 
different times and from different positions. The inferential 
elements are the true levelers in perception and thrust the 
discordant aspects into the background where only the trained 
mental eye of the psychologist can discern them. To see 
things as they would appear, could the inferential elements 
themselves be discounted, is the task also of the painter. What 
strange stories he relates of the ''real'' appearances of land- 
scapes or of the hurrying throng moving through the narrow 
city streets lighted by sputtering gas jets! He removes the 
pressure towards uniformity and definiteness exerted by past 
experience- and presents to us what he asserts we could see 
were our mental vision not cramped and conventionalized. 
These facts prove beyond reasonable doubt that perception 
cannot be an actus pur us or a mere unmediated event. The 
plain man's immediacy breaks down before the analysis which 
coordinated reflection on the facts develops. The only 



NATURAL REALISM 19 

rejoinder which the defender of Natural ReaHsm can offer 
to this and the other conflicts which arise to overwhelm it 
is that the internal medium is more effective than is usually 
supposed. To admit this is, however, to give up the imme- 
diacy upon which Natural Realism prides itself. Even 
though the percept be physical, it cannot be identified with the 
object which only partly conditions it. 

It may be well to attack the immediacy of perception from 
another angle in order to discredit it completely; otherwise, 
some unacknowledged belief may linger to act as traitor to 
the movement of the argument. Suppose it to be asserted 
that an inner core of the percept can be rescued from its 
swathing of mental factors and be taken as a part or aspect of 
the physical thing, what shall we reply to such an assertion? 
We need only repeat the arguments in regard to spatial and 
temporal differences, mediation, lack of concomitant variation, 
and individual divergences, which we have examined at length, 
and add to these the further fact that the physical object as 
we believe it to exist and as the plain man believes it to exist 
cannot be reconstructed from a physical piecing together of 
the percepts. It takes but little reflection to realize that, if 
percepts are functions of the position of the individual, they 
cannot be put together to form the object without taking this 
perspective into account. The percepts which I obtain by 
moving around a house would not fit together like blocks to 
form the house. They are uncombinable in this mechanical 
sense; and since, if they are physical, a spatial combination is 
the only one conceivable, we can infer that they are not in any 
literal sense parts of the object. Again, as we move from a 
house, we obtain a very large number of successive percepts of 
the same side of the house, and these differ from one another 
and are also uncombinable. No object in the world could be 
identical with them and harmonize their fundamental dif- 
ferences in contour, size, internal relations, and shades of color. 
The percept hovers between the individual and the thing and 
can be identified with neither; it seems to be in a world of its 
own which has other laws than those which physical things 
obey. For this reason it is called mental. Let us see whether 
this classification lessens the difficulties. If percepts are 



20 CRITICAL REALISM 

mental, they are not spatially coexistent, nor are they per- 
manent. Hence, all question of a literal combination drops. 
If organization there be, it is of that non-physical kind which 
we called standardization, and which is historical and not 
spatial. Questions there are a-plenty in regard to the nature 
and laws of this temporal mediation, but they are not flatly 
absurd, as are those which confront the union of physical 
percepts. Experience is cumulative and organic, arid synthesis 
in the mental world admits adaptations which the physical 
could not permit. 

Our study of the inadequacies and conflicts which confront 
Natural Realism is completed. While the points have been 
taken up only in outline, their cumulative effect is, I believe, 
irresistible. Perception cannot be an event in which physical 
things are present to the individual as they are. That which 
is present to the individual is a function of many conditions 
and must be considered mentaP and not physical. What, 
then, shall we do ? Because the theory of perception implicit 
in Natural Realism is found to be erroneous, must we give up 
the realistic distinctions and meanings which accompany it? 
When we come to examine our results from this standpoint, 
we find that the physical thing, while no longer present in 
perception, is assumed as one of the conditions of that which 
is perceived. But that which conditions must be as real as 
that which is conditioned. The physical thing is still there; 
if it is not perceived, how is it known? We have in no sense 
freed ourselves from the realistic distinctions and meanings. 
The question which we must seriously ask ourselves is this: 
Can a theory of knowledge be achieved which will do justice 
to these realistic distinctions and meanings and yet not be open 
to the objections which have proved fatal to Natural Realism 
Evidently, a theory of knowledge and not merely of perception 
would be required to accomplish this result. In some sense, 
perception would have to be subordinate to knowledge. 
Too often the bankruptcy of Natural Realism has been 
regarded as merely the opportunity of idealism. This attitude 
has prevented systematic and persevering attempts at the 
formation of a theory of knowledge which would admit the 

1 To clear up the various meanings of this term will be an important part of our task. 



? 



NATURAL REALISM 21 

mental nature of the percept and yet maintain that knowledge 
uses the percept for its own greater purposes. The task which 
yet remains in our critical examination of Natural Realism 
is to consider the modifications in it introduced by science. 
This inquiry will be found to further our larger design. 



CHAPTER II 

NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 

SCIENCE, so long as it is not influenced by any phil- 
osophy save its own half -conscious sort, does not differ 
markedly in its outlook from common sense. It is for this 
reason that the beginner in science is unaware of any revo- 
lutionary change in his attitude toward nature. The ideal 
of knowledge is higher, the methods used are more exact, 
the information obtained fuller, the purpose more complex 
and impersonal; but, when all is said, the object of reference 
and our attitude toward it have not changed. We still regard 
nature as common and as independent of our consciousness 
of it. 

When the science whose study is taken up is concrete, 
the passage to it from the attitude and distinctions of common 
sense is most markedly without a break. Scarcely any read- 
justment of outlook is necessary; the material is richer and 
new facts and principles are added, but the familiar context is 
developed rather than revolutionized. Common sense has its 
explanations and theories, but these are distanced by the 
patient investigations of science, and their inadequacies are 
pointed out. Nature is put under a microscope and we are 
prepared to see its appearance transformed. We expect to 
discover relations and processes more fundamental than those 
which reveal themselves to the naked eye. Still, this analysis 
goes on within the outlines of what remains to us a world 
perceivable by all. When the sciences studied are more 
abstract, — physics and chemistry for example, — the customary 
view of nature tends to undergo certain very interesting 
modifications. The basic meanings which characterize nature 
persist — things are still looked upon as common and inde- 
pendent ; but nature itself is stripped of many of its qualities 
and presents a new appearance to the mental eye. Strictly 
speaking, it has become more a correlate of conception than of 
perception. It is extremely interesting, in the case of students, 
to observe the gradual way in which the secondary qualities 

22 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 23 

move from nature. Long after they have understood the 
readjustment which seeks to account for the secondary quaH- 
ties, Hke color and sound and fragrance, as sensation-quahties 
causally connected with disturbances in the air or the ether, 
or with chemical processes set up in the nerves, the real world 
remains colored and sonorous to them. Atoms and electrons 
and ether vibrations differ too radically from the world as 
they have been accustomed to perceive and to conceive it 
to have power to substitute themselves at once for the every- 
day view. The new outlook does not readily acquire a 
reality -feeling. The mind experiences a sort of homesickness 
in the presence of tl\is new nature. It is because of this 
temporary alienness that the modifications in Natural Realism 
introduced by the physical sciences are not more acutely 
realized. However, even through these changes to which 
the more abstract sciences have been led from motives and 
problems which have arisen inevitably in their growth, the 
skeleton of Natural Realism persists. Nature is still bathed 
in the meanings of independence, commonness, perdurableness 
and causal relation. Moreover, the attitude of intuition still 
lingers; the scientist is often nearly as outward-looking as 
the plain man. 

Let us glance at the distinctions common to science and 
enlightened common sense. These may be stated as follows: 
(i) There are two fields of experience, the external, or physical, 
and the inner, or psychical. (2) The external world is composed 
of things and processes in space and time. (3) These processes 
. and things are describable and behave according to knowable 
I laws. (4) The external world is known by the plurality of minds 
which constitute the inner, or psychical, world. (5) These minds 
are joined to bodies which are parts of the external world. 

These distinctions which form the framework of scientific 

realism are evidently vague and only roughly worked out 

as they stand. They are like glimpses of a mountainous 

country seen through a wind-broken mist. The how of the 

I knowledge of the physical realm possessed by these minds is 

! not clear. Undoubtedly, the old intuitionalism of common 

sense lingers; the fact of knowledge dominates over its nature 

y and means of attainment. For instance, one writer on 



24 CRITICAL REALISM 

science, who is also a scientist of some standing, speaks of the 
senses as channels through which information is somehow 
poured. 

Again, there are usually rather unclear ideas as to what 
laws of nature are. Are they descriptions or governing 
forces ? Thus we could continue to point out problems, taking 
these distinctions as our text, and find that neither common 
sense nor science has very definite notions of its assumptions. 
But I do not wish to leave the impression that science is on 
the same level as common sense; its ideas are much more 
developed and it has worked out points of view and made 
analyses which the plain man cannot understand. Probably 
the science of mechanics illustrates this divergence better than 
the more concrete sciences which keep nearer to perception. 
Let us briefly examine the history and the axioms of mechan- 
ics in order to bring out the advance of scientific analysis 
over that of common sense. 

Everyone admits to-day that geometry had its origin in 
experience. Many of the propositions which geometricians 
prove deductively on the basis of certain axioms and postulates 
were discovered empirically. It was taught at Babylon that 
the side of a regular hexagon is equal to the radius of the circle 
in which it is inscribed. This was not proved in the strict 
mathematical sense until the Greeks rationalized geometry; 
it was merely found to be the case by observation and measure- 
ment. Now, geometry became a rational science long before 
mechanics. The reason for this is interesting and concerns 
our problem. The axioms of geometry arise from mankind's 
experience with solids. Distances and contours are passive 
and measurable and recur constantly in our perception of the 
external world. Spatial relations, because of their universality 
and definiteness, crystallize out from the qualitative mani- 
fold in which they are embedded. Soon, under the guidance 
of abstraction and idealization, they become the framework, 
or skeleton, of our conception of the physical universe. There 
is no break with perception, and, consequently, the axioms of 
geometry which represent the most universal characteristics 
of this resultant space seem to have a basis of an almost 
instinctive nature. The axioms of mechanics, on the other 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 25 

hand, as M. Painleve points out, gave rise to the most im- 
passioned controversies as late as two and a half centuries 
ago, are unknown to the mass of men even to-day, and are 
often wrongly understood by those who use them. Mechanics 
deals mainly with movement, and movement is not easily 
seized and analyzed. ''Far from imposing themselves on 
our senses as the properties of solids do, the fundamental 
laws of movements could be reached only by an already 
developed technique, experimental and mathematical in 
character.'' (Painleve, De la Methode dans les Sciences ^ 
p. 369.) The controversy between the scholastics and the 
disciples of Copernicus illustrates very well the conceptual 
level upon which modern mechanics is founded. The scho- 
lastics held to the principle of inertia. They argued that any 
material element at an infinite distance from other elements 
is necessarily at rest. The Copernicans, on the contrary, 
maintained that such an element would keep its velocity. 
Another point of importance is the fact that mechanics seeks 
to work out a system of absolute references and standards of 
measurements to enable it to overcome the relativity of 
perception. The result is a reordering of immediate experi- 
ence which the plain man can by no means follow. Any 
teacher of physics will inform one how hard it is to get the 
students to understand the definitions and distinctions which 
are so basic in his science. Thus science makes definite 
advances over common sense while it retains the realistic 
structure characteristic of man's natural outlook upon his 
world. 

When, however, science turns back on itself and begins 
to reflect on the methods by which its knowledge of the 
physical world is achieved, it is forced to reject the intui- 
tionalism of Natural Realism. The part played by the mind 
and the indirect way in which knowledge is gradually built 
up awaken skepticism, and the difficulties encountered in the 
solution of problems reenforce the awakened doubt of the 
passive view of cognition held by common sense. Science 
itself seldom allows this skepticism to bulk too large; its 
interest is too positive and controlled too immediately by its 
material and its traditions to permit the problem of knowledge 



26 CRITICAL REALISM 

to deflect its attention. Individual scientists are, however, 
moved by these critical motives to react drastically toward 
the simpler theories of cognition which they inherit from 
Natural Realism. Not infrequently, the reaction is so violent 
as to carry the reflective scientist to idealism of a sensation- 
alistic sort, but usually a compromise position is taken which 
seeks to retain as much as possible of the realistic basis from 
which science has grown. Chief among the distinctions which 
make this working compromise effective are those between 
the primary and the secondary qualities, and between sensa- 
tions, on the one hand, and objective bodies and processes 
in space and time, on the other hand. In the preceding 
chapter, we had occasion to note how this latter distinction 
is forced upon us. We saw that the question which is raised 
by it is this: If percepts cannot be identified with physical 
bodies, how can knowledge of these be obtained? Now, 
science does not doubt that it possesses knowledge, but it 
is aware that it has attained unto this knowledge through 
effort and by adoption of methods of experiment and analysis. 
Why these methods enable us to secure knowledge it is not 
prepared to say, nor is it certain of the limits and extent of 
its knowledge. Engrossed in particular problems and pressed 
onward by its technique and practical success, it allows the 
problems of knowledge to remain in the background, so to 
speak, of its consciousness. The result is a modus vivendi in 
which the reflective and the positive tendencies are free to 
develop themselves without let or hindrance from each other. 
Physical science organizes its facts in space and time by means 
of impersonal principles, while psychology and logic seek to 
show that the world is in some sense a construct. This 
antagonism which works beneath the surface of experience 
and which can not be assuaged, except momentarily, by the 
compromise referred to above, is due to the inadequate adjust- 
ment of the psychological and logical motives in experience to 
the realistic meanings and impersonal organization built up 
in science. 

Under the pressure of the facts, then, Natural Realism gives 
place to a more critical form which may be designated scientific 
realism. Science commences, as we have noted, in full 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 27 

agreement with the outlook of common sense. Things are 
obviously objective and independent of the individual's 
awareness of them. Investigation, however, begins to indicate 
that the qualities of things are not on the same level. Certain 
attributes are functions of complex conditions which can be 
stated in terms of other attributes which seem basic. These 
aspects are measurable, and secure an independence of percep- 
tual perspective through the direct or indirect application of 
standard units to the objects or processes under observation. 
The influence of the position of the observer is thus eliminated. 
By this procedure, commonness and independence are again 
recovered. The thing is standardized and can be contrasted 
with the variety of the personal experiences of it. A large 
part of the technique of the laboratory is concerned with this 
problem of measurement; instrument after instrument is 
evolved to make the purely perceptual element as insignificant 
as possible. What are cathetometers and micrometers but 
instruments for the minimizing of perception? All that is 
needed is the identification of a mark. Contrast the result 
thus obtained with the variation in the size of a percept as 
we approach the thing to which we refer it. Now, we have 
in these two classes of attributes which require different 
techniques the historical division into primary and secondary 
qualities. This is not the place to give in detail all the reasons 
which have led to this distinction ; but a brief summary of some 
of the motives will throw light upon the character of the 
movement in science towards a restatement of the physical. 
The point for us to note is the attempt to go beyond perceptual 
observation with its perspective and to make perception 
subordinate to the determination of what science calls facts. 

The primary dimensions of things and processes, such 
as extension, movement, mass and energy, can be used 
for the purposes of exact description and explanation 
because they are measurable and lend themselves to 
mathematical and physical analysis. For this reason, results 
can be obtained which are not variable from moment to 
moment as is the case with the secondary qualities. If these 
aspects of an object change, the changes can be reduced to 
law and referred to other changes of like character. In 



28 CRITICAL REALISM 

other words, the primary aspects of things form a system 
of a closed character in which changes can be partially 
calculated beforehand. The color, the taste, the odor of 
an object cannot develop this systematic character; a rela- 
tion to the percipient always dominates them; they cannot 
free themselves from what we have called perceptual per- 
spective. In other words, the secondary qualities are relative 
to the individual, while the primary qualities can be freed 
from this relativity. But other differences supplement those 
already advanced. The primary aspects of things are com- 
mon to all physical things under all conditions thus far 
known; this universality is not true of the secondary char- 
acteristics. These are more capricious and are frequently 
absent altogether. There are substances which are odorless 
and others which are colorless. Objects, when struck, may 
give off sound, but they are not always emitting sound. 
They are, however, always extensive. Thus the discreteness 
of the secondary qualities, their lack of continuity, their 
relativity, their occasional absences, all make them cancel out 
when a general outlook on the physical world is sought. They 
are relegated to the percept side and related to the individual 
as a percipient. This justifiable tendency to their elimination 
is strengthened by two other motives. First, they can in part 
be explained and predicted as mathematically expressed func- 
' tions of the primary qualities as long as the organism remains 
a constant; and, secondly, the activities in nature can be 
stated only in terms of the primary qualities. It seems 
difficult to conceive, for instance, how the odor or color of one 
physical object can affect another object. Thus the motives 
toward a separation of the aspects of things into those which 
are relative to the percipient and are perceptual and those 
which are absolute and objective reenforce each other. Even 
from this brief treatment of the distinction between the 
primary and the secondary qualities, it is clear that the former 
have gradually developed into meanings connected with the 
necessary structure and behavior of things, whereas the latter, 
remaining passive and relative, have kept nearer to their 
primitive, sensational character. The reason for this seems 
grounded deep in the nature of experience; it must have an 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 29 

epistemological significance. Science meets the motives which 
effectually challenge Natural Realism in this way and retains 
the thing in contrast to the percept. The result is what we 
have called scientific realism, which is a purified Natural 
Realism. Such are the general considerations which have 
led to the relegation of the secondary qualities to the personal, 
perceptual side, as effects on the conscious individual of real 
processes at work in the physical world. Whether these 
real processes can be adequately stated in terms of mass, 
movement, and energy is a further question which we shall 
not take up at present. 

After the separation of the primary from the secondary 
qualities has been achieved by science as a result of its tech- 
nique and its problems, the way is prepared for a marked 
change in man's outlook on the physical world. Perception 
is gradually displaced by conception, much as, in petrifaction, 
the wood fibre is displaced by minerals. Theoretically, atoms 
and molecules are perceivable, but, were they perceived, 
reason must remove from them their veil of color even 
were it the drabest grey. This can be done only because 
we no longer picture them, but, instead, think them. They 
are objects of conception rather than of perception. The 
skeleton of Natural Realism remains, while the content has 
undergone a fundamental alteration. It is the gradual 
character of this change, which is not fully realized, that 
enables the matter of the scientist to be at once semi- 
perceptual and semi-conceptual. So long as science is 
absorbed in its particular problems and in its method and 
technique, the problem of knowledge is, we have seen, quies- 
cent. The view of perception held by common sense lingers in 
spite of the corrections which science is forced to make in con- 
nection with that which is perceived. Hence, atoms are thought 
of as perceivable. I doubt not that electrons are likewise held 
to be susceptible of being perceived were our sense-organs fit 
for the task. To be real is to be susceptible of being perceived 
or of affecting that which is susceptible of being perceived. 
What does this assertion signify ? If we are forced to 
distinguish between thing and percept, as science acknowl- 
edges and as our critique of Natural Realism led us to grant, 



30 CRITICAL REALISM 

what does the expression, * 'susceptible of being perceived/' 
mean? The only meaning I can assign to it is the following: 
Things and processes can be known but they can be known only 
on the foundation of perception. A percept and a physical thing 
are not the same, but the latter can be known to the degree it is 
known in science only because it conditions percepts. Now 
science is aware of this principle, but only in a confused way 
because of its lack of reflective interest in the problem of 
knowledge.^ Strictly speaking, then, atoms are not perceivable 
nor are physical things perceivable; they could not present 
themselves to perception as an event. Instead, they are 
known by means of percepts which they condition. The 
error of which the scientific investigator is guilty is the 
continuance of the use of the term perception as synony- 
mous with knowledge, after his subject-matter has outgrown 
the outlook implied by the term. 

Let us examine Berkeley's refutation of the cognitive signifi- 
cance of the distinction between primary and secondary 
qualities from the present standpoint. It must be remembered 
that, because we defend the distinction, it does not follow that 
we defend the view of matter held by Locke. The position 
that the primary qualities inhere in an inert substance is surely 
quite separable from the belief that science can gain information 
about physical things and that this information is not 
penetrated by the relativity to the human organism char- 
acteristic of percepts. With this suggestion in mind, let 
us analyze the arguments advanced by Berkeley. 

The first argument of importance concerns the impos- 
sibility of separating, even in thought, the primary qualities ^ 
from the secondary. ''But I desire anyone to reflect and try 
whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the 
extension and motion of a body without all other sensible 
qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in 

1 The term, knowledge, is ambiguous since it covers both the system of propositions accepted 
by the mind and the fact that these propositions are regarded as somehow giving knowledge about 
a real world independent of the mind. No one doubts that we have knowledge in the first sense. 

2 The critical realist does not hold that extension is a thing which exists outside the mind; 
instead, he maintains that the physical world is extended, i.e., measurable. Extension and the 
other primary qualities are for science really categories characteristic of our knowledge about 
nature, not qualities inherent in nature in the Lockian sense or possibly perceivable aspects of the 
physical world. Berkeley, as usual, is right in what he denies, not in what he affirms. I shall have 
more to say in regard to this point in a forthcoming work on the Categories, 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 31 

my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving, 
but I must withal give it some color or other sensible quality 
which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. {Prin- 
ciples, sec. 10.) Now, when Berkeley speaks of framing an 
idea, he means an image or picture. The task he sets for us to 
accomplish is like that of having a percept which has no 
secondary qualities. This I acknowledge to be impossible. 
All the good visualizers in my classes have always shaken 
their heads at any attempt to separate the two classes of 
properties and have agreed with Berkeley. And I feel sure 
that this agreement rests upon the same grounds as the 
original assertion. But the space and motion which science 
measures are not perceptual space and perceptual motion. 
The scientist ascertains the fact that a wave length is such a 
part of a millimeter. The information conveyed can be ex- 
pressed only in number symbols, and any attempt to visualize 
the extension is beside the point. We have to do here with 
concepts whose significance cannot be separated from the 
system of units employed. And I feel sure that, when I am 
told that a body has a certain mass and a certain extension, 
I have no idea of color connected with these quantitative facts ; 
yet I understand what is meant. Even were I concrete in 
my imagery and tended to see a body of a definite size and 
extent and possessed of a color, I am sure that I should regard 
this imagery as inadequate to express what I had in mind. In 
short, science deals, not with sensible qualities, but with 
quantities and causal relations; and these are propositions of 
a complex character understood only by those trained in 
mathematics and physical measurements. The symbols for 
these are verbal or numerical, and images of any other kind 
are adventitious. It is only when the primary dimensions of 
physical bodies are thought of in terms of perceptual or sen- 
sible qualities that the argument of Berkeley is relevant. The 
point which I wish to make can, perhaps, be best brought 
out by contrast with what I do not wish to maintain. The 
attitude of science toward the primary qualities must not be 
identified with materialism. This seems to be the feature of 
the problem w^hich Mr. Bradley has most in mind. ''That 
doctrine [materialism] of course holds that the extended can 



32 CRITICAL REALISM 

be actual entirely apart from every other quality. But 
extension is never so given. If it is visual, it must be colored; 
and if it is tactual, or acquired in the various other ways 
which may fall under the head of the ''muscular sense,'' then 
it is never free from sensations, coming from the skin, or the 
joints, or the muscles, or, as some would like to add, from a 
central source. {Appearance and Reality, p. 17.) All this is 
very true, but irrelevant to the present problem; and its 
irrelevance is what I wish to show. When the scientist 
asserts that the moon is two hundred and thirty eight thou- 
sand eight hundred and forty miles from the earth, he does 
not seek to consider a sensible quality drawn from eye-move- 
ment or joint-sensation as occupying this space. He asserts 
a fact revealed by his astronomical technique, and this fact 
has definite meaning. He is stating facts about things which 
seem to be free from the relativity which overwhelms per- 
cepts and their constituents. He must perceive in order 
to measure, but what he perceives is merely a sign for a concep- 
tual interpretation. Of course, this interpretation is founded 
upon certain postulates and upon definite theories and is no 
stronger than they are. We shall have occasion to examine 
this mediate character of a scientific fact later ; but at present 
our main task is to get a clear idea of the objectivity of the 
dimensions in terms of which science states its knowledge about 
physical things — and by objectivity I mean their freedom 
from perceptual perspective. ;■ | 

Our conclusion in regard to the first argument raised by 
Berkeley throws light upon another objection of his. He 
condemns Locke's claim that the primary qualities are patterns 
of things ''which exist without the mind, in an unthinking 
substance which they call Matter." So, certainly, would I 
condemn such a view. To have knowledge about the physi- 
cal world does not imply the possession of patterns of entities 
existing outside the mind. Science makes no such claim, and 
the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is 
not based on such a hope. For this reason, it is, perhaps, 
better to employ the term "dimensions" in place of qualities. 
What the reach and nature of the knowledge achieved by 
science is must be investigated in due time. This much we 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 33 

may say, however, that the naive views found in Locke's 
version are gone forever. 

Another argument urged by Berkeley is interesting in 
this connection. It is the argument from what I have desig- 
nated perceptual perspective. "Again, great and small, swift 
and slow, are allowed to exist nowhere without the mind, 
being entirely relative, and changing as the frame or position 
of the organ of sense varies. The extension therefore which 
exists without the mind is neither great nor small, the motion 
neither swift nor slow, that is, they are nothing at all" 
(sec. 11). Evidently Berkeley argues from the relativity of 
perception to the impossibility of our knowledge about motions 
or extensions not relative to the individual yet possessed of 
I degrees. And so long as we keep within perception as such, 
this argument is unanswerable. The size which we assign 
to an object is simply a standard size and is relative to a 
,(more or less arbitrarily adopted) standard distance. The 
j motives which lead me to consider an object a certain size 
are essentially practical. The perceptual size of my type- 
writer, for instance, is determined by my position as I use it. 
But what reason of a theoretical nature have I to advance 
for a belief that this standard perceptual size is the real size? 
The typewriter cannot, however, be all sizes at once; hence, 
.we are forced to the conclusion that perceptual extent is 
jjpurely relative. How, then, does science elude the difficulty? 
As we have seen, it eludes it by measurement in terms of 
, standard units. Science does not trust to perception when 
it wishes to determine the relative sizes of physical things; 
Jit resorts to the superposition, direct or indirect, of objects 
upon one another. And an intimate knowledge of physical 
j measurements and the technique they involve is necessary 
to an appreciation of how different the results thus obtained 
jare from those of mere unaided perception. The result is 
p elimination of the perceptual perspective or the reference 
^to the position of the percipient, upon which Berkeley lays 
Ijso much stress. ''Suppose this to be admitted," the idealist 
• replies, ''still the interpretation of the unit of measurement 
,,must be in terms of perception." To use a simple illustra- 
||tion which can yet be regarded as typical of more complex 
/ 



34 CRITICAL REALISM 

measurements, I measure a tree, which has fallen, by means 
of a yardstick. In this way, I obtain a knowledge of the 
length of the tree in terms of the unit; but the unit itself is 
given to me in perception. To measure it in terms of a smaller 
unit does not help me to escape the difficulty, since this smaller 
unit must itself be given in perception, and so on. Thus my 
estimate of the real dimensions of things is finally founded 
upon my perceptual experience. And I see no way of avoiding 
this foundation. Science can give us ratios relative to units, 
not a stark vision of intrinsic and absolute dimensions. 
The point which Berkeley does not note is important never- 
theless. These ratios are not relative to the individual per- 
cipient, but relative to the unit of measurement. We can 
assert that one thing is greater than another by a certain 
proportion, and that one motion is swifter than another. The 
fact that the individual's interpretation of these fixed ratios 
is necessarily in terms of his standardized idea of the unit 
does not impugn the independence of the ratios as such. 
There are different kinds of relativities, and these must not 
be confused. 

The conclusion which can be drawn from this critical 
analysis of the arguments advanced by Berkeley against the 
separation of the primary and secondary qualities may be 
stated thus. The objectivity assigned to the so-called pri- 
mary qualities of things, as these are determined by measure- 
ment, is that of knowledge. The knowledge thus obtained is 
in terms of conceptual ratios and does not signify the reifica- 
tion of sensible qualities, such as perceptual extent, or the 
view that such sensible qualities are patterns of entities 
existent in nature. In this way, science works beyond the 
intuitionalism of Natural Realism so far as it is able, and gains 
knowledge about things. But what this knowledge is and 
its exact reach are seldom, if ever, completely clear to it. 
Berkeley's argument, like that of Bradley, is valid only 
against a false realism. 

Once on this road, science pushes onward to a conceptual 
interpretation of observations in terms of quantities, ratios, 
definitions, relations, and laws. Laws are statements in as 
definite form as possible of supposedly invariable relations. 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 35 

In the abstracter sciences, those, namely, of inorganic nature, 
these statements are in mathematical form and express 
relations between quantities. The quantities are themselves 
measurable aspects of physical processes expressed in units 
which are arbitrary qua units, but otherwise natural as selected 
portions of some primary dimension. Given this basis, science 
works from observation to theory and from theory to observa- 
tion and formulates its results as concisely as possible. The 
discovery of causal connections, which accompanies the 
quantitative description of the facts, carries science nearer 
to its goal. What is this goal? Were science agreed in regard 
to this point, our investigation would be indeed easier. 

Especially in the abstracter sciences, nature xS now re- 
garded as a series of processes rather than as a collection of 
things. Things are no doubt still essential elements in many 
i of the events which occui in the external world, but detailed 
analysis has bereft them of their primacy. They are now 
seen in a context of relations which common sense failed to 
, note. With things, if I am not mistaken, has gone in large 
' part the older conception of the primary qualities. Impene- 
i trability, for example, is no longer considered an ultimate 
and unanalyzable characteristic of the physically real. In 
its place, we have energy relations and the concept of conser- 
, vation. The original attribute was too passive and sensational, 
I it could not be applied in an explanatory way to the detailed 
j behavior of things and processes ; it could not be treated by 
, mathematics — which, perhaps, amounts to the same thing. 
J For these reasons, it has lost its former status and is now 
1 treated as derived. This change in attitude toward a primary 
quality, once in high favor, illustrates the work of conceptual 
reconstruction performed by science in its effort to become 
objective. In ever greater degree, the passive attitude of 
common sense with its uncritical mixture of perception and 
conception and its inability to analyze changes and relations 
is replaced by an active rationalism which seeks to know what 
occurs in nature as fully as it can be known. When this level 
is attained, the primary qualities as used by science are no 
longer sensations, as Berkeley held them to be, but categories 
tested by their organizing value. 



36 CRITICAL REALISM 

Before this further level is reached, however, the deviation 
of science from common sense becomes so apparent that the 
problem of the nature and reference of the knowledge gained 
by science is unavoidably raised. The results achieved are 
so indirect and so obviously depend on the constructive 
activity of the human mind working with inductive and deduc- 
tive methods and guided in its observations and experiments 
by general ideas, that the rather passive, intuitionalistic view 
from which, as we have seen, science arises, refuses longer to 
stand sponsor for them. The deeply rooted feeling-reactions 
which vitalize physical things for the plain man and endow 
them with a reality-feeling, decline to bolster up what are 
seemingly creations of the mind. Things I know; but what 
are mass and energy and ether? — thus would the plain man 
state his position. Consequently, reflection arises and the 
cognitive import of science becomes matter for investigation 
and often for dispute. The situation which ensues is more 
complex and perplexing than is usually realized. The scientist 
who seeks to solve it is facing a difficult question ; none other, 
in fact, than the nature and reference of the knowledge attained 
by science. If he remain a natural realist, he must ask him- 
self how the concepts by means of which he organizes his data 
are moored to the things he perceives. And the question, 
once asked, gives its own negative answer. If the scientist 
hold to realism, it cannot be Natural Realism. This conclu- 
sion, which follows from the analysis we have so far made of 
science, reenforces the result arrived at in the first chapter. 
Thus the choice before science is no longer simple; the frame- 
work of experience has ceased to be distinct, and the old 
meanings of Natural Realism, once challenged as to their 
validity and applicability, lose their assurance. Which, indeed, 
are real — laws, concepts, things, or facts? 

Several positions can be and actually have been taken by 
scientists when they become conscious of the problem of 
knowledge; and all these are instructive. It will repay us to 
glance at these positions briefly. 

In many cases, there has been a complete reaction against 
Natural Realism and the adoption of what is, to all intents, a 
sensationalistic idealism. Science, for this outlook, is nothing 






NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 37 

more than a more accurate and extended description of man's 
perceptual experience. It is a conceptual summary of per- 
ceptual facts, richer and more exact than that furnished by 
common sense. It pays particular attention to invariable 
sequences in experience and analyzes them out wherever 
possible. By this means, it makes the prediction of future 
events feasible, especially as it lays stress upon exact quanti- 
tative relations which have held in the past. Karl Pearson 
and Ernst Mach are probably the two best representatives 
of this view. There is a divergence in their positions, however, 
which is interesting for our problem. It is necessary, for this 
reason, to discuss them separately yet with this comparison 
in mind. 

Pearson definitely limits the field of science to constructs 
which are the union of sense-impressions with associated, 
stored impressions. ''The outer world is for science a world 
of sensations, and sensation is known to us only as sense- 
impression.'' The ego is shut up within the brain terminals 
of the sensory nerves, and is thus limited in its experience to 
the sense-impressions which flow in from that "outside world.'' 
These the scientist analyzes, classifies, and reasons about, 
but he can know nothing about the nature of the ''things-in- 
themselves" which may exist at the other end of the brain 
terminals. As many other thinkers have pointed out, Pearson 
assumes constantly the real existence of the physical world 
in order to account for sense-impressions. "The same type of 
physical organ receives the same sense-impressions and forms 
the same constructs." {Grammar of Science, p. 47, third 
edition.) The result is a contradiction; what right have we 
to assume physical organs of the same type if our knowledge 
is limited to sense-impressions? Evidently, we have in the 
foregoing assertion the proof of the stubborn persistence of 
Natural Realism within the shifting of view-point due to 
reflection. Pearson is often called a sensationalist, but such a 
characterization is hardly just. He distinctly states that he 
uses the word "sensation" instead of sense-impression, "to 
express our ignorance, our absolute agnosticism, as to whether 
sense-impressions are 'produced' by unknowable things-in- 
themselves, or whether behind them may not be something of 

4 



38 CRITICAL REALISM 

their own nature'' (p. 68). Thus reaHsm lurks behind his 
empiricism and renders it ill at ease. His frequent outbursts 
against metaphysics are but symptomatic of this lack of 
assurance. 

The position adopted by Ernst Mach is even more interest- 
ing than that of Pearson, because it attempts to account for 
the distinction between the external and the inner world in 
terms of relations between elements which he calls sensations. 
''Let those complexes of colors, sounds, and so forth, com- 
monly called bodies, be designated, for the sake of simplicity, 
A B C; the complex, known as our own body, which con- 
stitutes a part of the former, may be called KLM; the 
complex composed of volitions, memory -images, and the rest, 
we shall represent by ahc. Usually, now, the complex ahc 
KLM, as making up the ego, is opposed to the complex 
yl £ C, as making up the world of substance; sometimes, also, 
ah CIS viewed as ego, and K LM AB C ^,s world of substance. 
[This is essentially a description of Natural Realism.] Now, 
at first blush, ABC appear independent of the ego, and 
opposed to it as a separate existence. But this independence 
is only relative, and gives way upon closer inspection. Pre- 
cisely viewed, however, it appears that the group AB C is 
always co-determined by KLM. A cube of wood when seen 
close at hand looks large; when at a distance, small; it looks 
different with the right eye from what it does with the left. 
But where, now, is that same body, which to the appearance is 
so different? All that can be said is, that with different KLM 
different ABC are associated." (Mach, The Analysis of the 
Sensations, pp. 8-9.) In other words, Mach argues from the 
facts of perceptual perspective to an empiricism of a Humean 
character. If we imagine physical things back of these 
percepts, they are ''deprived of their entire sensory contents, 
and converted into mere mental symbols. The assertion is 
correct, then, that the world consists only of our sensations.'' 
But these sensations are not psychical in their own nature; 
they are, as it were, neutral. When we consider the reciprocal 
relations of the elements of the complex ABC without 
regarding KLM (our body), we deal with what we call the 
external world. All physical investigations are of this sort. 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 39 

But the elements ABC are connected not only with one 
another, but also with KLM. ''To this extent, and to this 
extent only, do we call ABC sensations, and regard ABC 
as belonging to the ego" (p. 14). The value of this analysis 
must be recognized, and it is especially interesting because 
made by a physicist. It is, however, incomplete. The 
physicist not only disregards the complex, K L M, but seeks to 
abstract from those aspects oi AB C which are inseparably 
connected with KLM and to correct the perspective due to 
the position oi K L M. But we have investigated the problem 
which results sufficiently in the first part of the present chapter 
and in the first chapter. We saw, for instance, that it is not 
the body as such from which the scientist wishes to abstract, 
but the sense-organs and the nervous system as somehow the 
basis for percepts. The scientist believes that he can make 
percepts his tools for a knowledge which is non-perceptual. 
He develops methods and a technique in which instruments 
play a dominant role for the purpose of the discovery of ratios 
and relations. The scientist always passes from the crude 
fact of actual observation to the scientific fact which is its 
conceptual interpretation. Mach's analysis does not suffi- 
ciently take account of this movement. 

Another attitude is more prevalent than the one just 
discussed. The majority of scientists experiment and theorize 
in their respective fields and, in the endeavor to explain the 
facts which they ascertain, have recourse to essentially con- 
ceptual objects which are, nevertheless, on the same level 
as the more tangible things which we ordinarily speak of as 
being perceived. In this way, systems are constructed which 
are conceptual through and through. Their parts have been 
tested inductively and deductively, and it is almost impossible 
to separate fact from theory and theory from fact. The 
system as a whole is a growth which is coherent. In many 
cases, the conceptual factors worked into the system are 
supposed to be verae causae, hidden from perception for one 
reason or another, yet efficient. But every such vera causa 
reached by analytic theory must be capable of affecting the 
organism directly or indirectly. The result is a realism which 
is ripe to break with Natural Realism and to regard perception 



40 CRITICAL REALISM 

as a basis for knowledge and not a knowledge in itself. Critical 
as these thinkers are and aware that science has often been 
forced to discard theoretical elements which seemed assured, 
they do not see how science can forego such constructions. 
Truth is a slowly achieved product attained by conquering 
error and correcting inadequacies. Furthermore, science has 
realized that all error is relative and is often of great assistance 
in the progressive creation of more adequate ideas. Hence, 
these scientists continue to keep a realistic attitude toward the 
physical world. It is, however, a sophisticated realism of a crit- 
ical character quite different from the immediacy of Natural 
Realism. Knowledge is no longer a gift of perception which 
needs no testing, but an achievement liable to error. 
And a little reflection shows us that the existences and processes 
known are not and cannot be literally present in or to the 
mind knowing them. What is scientific knowledge then? 
The group of scientists who persist in scientific realism do not 
answer this question; they only hold, by the faith that is in 
them, to the success of their methods and technique. This 
attitude represents the outlook of the main body of scientists, 
and deserves more serious consideration from philosophy than 
that characteristic of those scientists who have given a reflective 
theory of knowledge upon the basis of a too meagre acquaint- 
ance with logic and psychology. We shall have occasion to 
return to it when we come to sum up our own positive 
conclusions. 

Many scientists who have become reflective accept the 
historical distinction between phenomena in space and time 
and things-in-themselves. Here we undoubtedly have the 
influence of philosophy. Even though the technical terms 
be not used, the contrast between that which is present in 
experience and that which is real apart from experience is 
analogous to the Kantian distinction. And, as a matter 
of fact, many distinguished scientists have been avowed 
Neo-Kantians. For instance, a large number of scientists 
hold that matter is an unknown, perhaps an unknowable, 
cause of phenomena. It is supposed to elude their investiga- 
tions much as life escapes the analysis of the biologist. They 
demand the existence of matter, but acknowledge that they 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 41 

must content themselves with the study of phenomena. They 
are not even certain that the study of phenomena gives 
knowledge of reality. There is, however, no unanimity in the 
use of terms. Some are evidently followers of Locke, others 
employ the Kantian terminology. Some speak of mass as an 
attribute of matter, while others regard it as the quantitative 
aspect of phenomena. But we m_ust not be misled by this varia- 
tion into the belief that the positions are essentially different. 
The terminologies simply represent different traditions. The 
point to be noted is the agreement by members of this group 
in the acceptance of the distinction between things as they 
appear and the reality which somehow lies back of them. 
The position is realistic, yet it is far removed from the intuition- 
alism of Natural Realism. It contains a strong agnostic note. 
Idealistic motives have made themselves felt so extensively 
and persistently that the ''w^hat," or content, is assigned 
to the side of experience, while the "that" remains outside 
of experience. The latter passes into the shadows, as it were, 
where it is seized upon by religious motives. The reason for 
this separation is, as we shall see later, the retention in large 
measure of the intuitional view of knowledge which char- 
acterizes Natural Realism. 

The consideration of the three main groups into which 
scientists may be divided as they become reflective makes it 
evident that science, although it begins with that outlook 
which we have called Natural Realism, outgrows it in part 
and is led into difficulties which it is unable to master. A 
theory of knowledge becomes a crying necessity. The wider 
information, the more accurate tracing of relations, the proof 
of the minuteness and complexity of the processes which occur 
in nature, which science accords us, are essential to the final 
verdict to be passed upon the world; but a decision as to the 
nature and reach of knowledge is equally essential. The very 
fact that there are these three groups would seem to indicate 
that science itself has no means to solve this latter problem. 
It is not well enough acquainted with the instrument, thought, 
which it uses. The statement made by some scientists that the 
task is to describe certain recurrent clusters of sensations, strikes 
me as sufficient proof of this conclusion. The impUcation 



42 CRITICAL REALISM 

of cognition cannot be ignored in this cavalier fashion. I 
feel convinced that much of the a^pparent idealism current 
among scientists who have attempted to develop a theory of 
knowledge is due to this ignorance of the instrument. Until 
it is bewildered by the role played by consciousness in the 
achievement of its results, science is realistic. This is an 
important fact which we must bear in mind. 

But the attitude of the physical sciences cannot be fully 
appreciated before the complementary position of the psychical 
sciences is understood. Both take their departure from the 
distinctions of everyday life. These distinctions are, however, 
dual in character and involve contrasts between antithetic 
terms such as ''outer'' and ''inner," "thing" and "percept." 
While things are common, persistent, and spatial, feelings 
and ideas are private, fleeting, and out of space. The 
physical sciences deal with extended objects causally con- 
nected in a closed system, whereas psychology is the 
science of consciousness. This term is a generic name for 
the sensations, images, pains, pleasures, meanings, acts of 
memory, etc., of individual minds. Psychology seeks to 
analyze and describe these and to determine their con- 
ditions. In so doing, it takes for granted the results of 
the physical sciences and is often able to bring them into 
relation with its own conclusions. These two classes of 
data are usually called the physical and the psychical respec- 
tively, and in accordance with this usage consciousness is 
considered synonymous with the psychical. The point which 
should be kept in mind is that these are contrast terms which 
always retain a shading, at least, of their relativity. This 
fact is especially important because of its bearing on the 
mind-body relation. We shall see that this contrast is often 
taken out of its scientific context and made absolute. In 
this act lurks a possibility of error. 

As a natural science, psychology begins with certain 
postulates back of which it does not seek to go. It assumes 
the reality of the physical and of the psychical and their 
distinctness. The further postulates of psychology have 
been well stated by James as characters of the stream of 
thought. {Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 225.) We 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 43 

shall have occasion to consider these in more detail when we 
come to analyze the mind-body relation. It is beyond ques- 
tion the fact that science believes that the psychical is in the 
same world as the ph^^sical, although it does not know the 
nature of their connection. They are domains with quite 
different laws which yet have commerce with one another. 
The points of contact are two in number and both are equally 
ultimate. The psychical somehow knows the physical and 
is in some manner connected with it by means of the organism. 
It is evident that this outlook is only a development of Natural 
Realism. The question which interests us is this, How long 
does this adjustment between the two domains last? We 
have already noted the difficulties which confront the physical 
sciences as they become more complex and reflective. Will 
not similar difficulties concerning the relations between these 
domains arise when both groups of the sciences become con- 
scious of their assumptions and overhaul their postulates? 
If we ma.y believe Ward, the adjustment between psychology 
and the physical sciences continues until the problem of 
external perception is broached. ''Psychology and the phys- 
ical sciences, work on the level of this uncritical thinking, 
take each their own half of what — if they think about it at 
all — they suppose to be a consistent and complete whole." 
(Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism^ Vol. II, p. 173.) We 
have already noted how Mach seeks to adjust the standpoint 
of the physicist with that of the psychologist. The same 
elements are taken in different relations. We pointed out 
that this solution does not do justice to what the physicist 
attemps to accomplish. The psychologist remains on the 
perceptual level far more than the physicist or chemist, when 
he marshals the facts of perception. It is onh^ by reaching 
another level that the scientist is able to eliminate perceptual 
perspective. I shall not repeat my analysis of scientific 
methods and technique, but shall only refer back to the exami- 
nation of the distinction between the primary and secondary 
qualities and forward to the next chapter for further 
confirmation. Now, present-day psychology is in working 
harmony with the physical sciences, even though the problem 
of perception and its relation to knowledge of nature has not 



44 ' CRITICAL REALISM 

been solved. Two points, accordingly, call for elucidation: 
Why is the problem of external perception considered so 
crucial? What modus vivendi has enabled psychology to 
remain in working harmony with the physical sciences? We 
shall take up these questions in some detail. 

Physical science, working at first within the distinctions 
of common sense, considers perception an act or an immediate 
event which somehow brings us into direct contact with the 
physical world. Psychology, on the other hand, has for its 
subject-matter the supposedly private domain of the psychical. 
In this domain, also, immediacy rules. ^ So long as we are 
outward-looking, perception seems to be an event in which 
things are revealed; when we are introspective and lay stress 
on the conditions which mediate perception, the same thing- 
experience is considered psychical. When this new attitude 
intervenes, the object loses its substantiality and independence 
and gains a new context. It is surprising how little these 
two standpoints conflict, i.e., how they can alternate in an 
individual's mind without his realizing their common posses- 
sion, the percept or qualitative, concrete thing. The common 
element is submerged by the inferential differences, by the 
divergent characteristics of the systems or domains to which 
it is referred. I have known graduate students in psychology 
not to realize the intimate connection of percept and thing 
perceived. They seemed to regard the percept as something 
experienced in the head and were surprised when I pointed 
out that percept and thing were experientially the same 
objectivum qualified, by different meanings. Small wonder is 
it, then, that the two groups of sciences, each working within 
its determinate standpoint with its own technique, find no 
difficulty in the relation of percept to thing. Dominated by 
their postulates, outlook and problems, the two groups of 
sciences do not ask whether their material is in any sense 
common. 

But the difficulties which we have already noted as con- 
fronting physical science when it becomes reflective inevitably 
raise the problem of the relation of percept to thing. If the 
percept be the object of which we are immediately aware in 

1 The data of both psychology and the physical sciences are given with the same immediacy. 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 45 

perception, how do we come to know the thing? When this 

question is once asked, the suspicion is awakened that the 

thing may be the percept. And we have seen that this is in a 

large measure true. Natural Realism falls permanently with 

the realization of this situation. . Either, then, knowledge of 

physical processes is different from perception, although based 

upon it, or some form of idealism must be adopted. We 

have noted how Pearson adopts the second alternative, while 

Mach seeks to go back of perception to something more 

primitive. Pearson's position has always seemed to me the 

less disingenuous. The difficulty which Mach does not 

sufficient^ realize rests in the fact that we do not seem to be 

able to get at the elements oi AB C (the physical world) 

except through their relations to KLM (our body). But, 

when so taken, according to Mach, they are to be called our 

sensations. Thus sensations are basic, and the problem is, 

j How is it possible to study the relations of the elements of 

{ABC among themselves, ie., to stndy A B C as physical 

^objects? I have tried to show how this feat is possible, but 

I it does not appear possible of solution on the foundation 

( offered by Mach. ABC are not given as primitive or neutral 

i elements; they are given as sensations. However this may 

i be, the percept enters the purview of the physical sciences 

as something to be reckoned with. The external sphere is 

I thus attacked by the inner sphere which threatens to extend 

' its boundaries. Percepts have an assurance, due to their 

! immediacy, which makes them powerful antagonists of the 

previously sovereign things. It is for this reason that the 

j problem of external perception is crucial. Any satisfactory 

' delimitation of the spheres of the physical and the psychical 

j sciences must be based on a theory of the relation of percepts 

. to things, causally and cognitively. The significance of 

I Berkeley has lain in his recognition of this fact and in his 

I emphatic championship of the percept in opposition to the 

' physical real of science. To be is to be a percept, expresses 

his attitude toward the physical world better than the phrase 

I which he adopted. 

Let us now consider the second question. What modus 
. Vivendi has enabled psychology to remain in working harmony 



46 CRITICAL REALISM 



1 



with the physical sciences even though the problem ot Knowl- i 
edge was not solved ? We have virtually indicated the answer j 
to this question in our discussion of the first. The harmony ' 
is secured by retention and development of the distinctions 
characteristic of Natural Realism on the basis of a duplication 
of what is immediately experienced into percept and thing. 
The percept is taken over by the inner sphere and qualified ^ 
in a way to accord with its new position. Let us call the \ 
primitive thing perceived the thing-experience. This thing- 
experience is, as it were, the matrix from which the more 
specialized percept and physical object of science develop. 
In the sections devoted to the distinction between the primary 
and the secondary qualities, so-called, we became acquainted 
with some of the motives which lead to this differentiation 
and fission. 

Only after the percept of psychology and the physical 
thing of the other natural sciences have been achieved does 
the reflective problem of perception arise. The thing- 
experience, upon which the external sciences build their 
superstructure of measurement and theory, tends to be drawn 
into the psychical sphere as fundamentally a percept and the 
physical thing is, as it were, left suspended in air. And so 
long as knowledge is identified with perception and is supposed 
to involve the actual presence of the physical process, it must 
be left thus dangling. The best that even objective idealism 
can do for it is to give it the support of the categories and the 
virtual image of the ego. Alas ! a virtual image, like a painted 
hook, will support nothing. 

The other theory of the relation of percept to physical 
thing which will repay consideration is that of Ward. He 
begins with the individual's experience as analyzed by 
psychology, and points out that there is here no dualism but 
a duality of subject and object. To use the terminology 
with which we are as yet more familiar, percepts are inseparable 
from the percipient and are essentially private. In a general 
way, I think that we can grant this contention. Upon this 
position as a basis, he seeks to show that the constructions 
built up by science, the generalized or universal Experience 
with which it is immediately concerned has grown out of. 



NATURAL REALISM AND SCIENCE 47 

depends upon, and is really but an extension of our primary, 
individual, concrete experience. {Naturalism and Agnos- 
ticism, Vol. II, p. 153.) The conclusion which Ward draws 
is that the independence which science assigns to its objects 
is a mistake founded upon a mistmderstanding of intersub- 
jective intercourse. The *' object'' of science is a construction 
in which conceptual elements dominate, but the possessor 
of this construct is still the concrete individual. There can 
be no other subject of experience except such an individual. 
With this last assertion we shall agree and shall give definite 
reasons for our agreement in a chapter where we shall deal 
with the Advance of the Personal. But, if our analysis of 
the rise of reflection be correct, the independence assigned by 
science to the physical thing is not due to a mistake founded 
upon a misunderstanding of inter subjective intercourse. It 
is more primitive than the standpoint of psychology and is 
natural to the individual's experience. We shall have occasion 
to say more about this problem later; at present, we can only 
fall back on the examination made in the first chapter. Per- 
cepts are thought of as in a relation of onesided causal 
dependence upon physical things. Thus percept and thing 
differentiate themselves from the thing-experience and in 
the course of this differentiation retain as essential the contrast 
relation of things and their appearances to individuals. The 
exact nature of their cognitive relation is left obscure, although 
the implication is, that knowledge of physical things is some- 
how based upon percepts. The sciences take the causal 
relation between them seriously. And I have as yet seen no 
good reason not to do likewise. The difficulty does not lie 
in the concept of such a relation, but in the problem of knowl- 
edge; if we know percepts alone, immediately, how can we 
know independent physical things? Whenever this problem 
is raised, the impulse is to deny the possibility of such real 
knowledge and to lapse into idealism. This is what Ward 
does. Are not physical things, after all, constructs? 

It is evident that the working adjustment between psy- 
chology and the physical sciences is one that has grown up 
on the basis of the contrast-meanings of common sense and 
has been strengthened by the respective methodologies of 



48 CRITICAL REALISM 

the two groups. It is not one that has a systematic episte- 
mology on which to rest. Hence, it is helpless in the face of 
a determined attack. This we have seen from a study of the 
typical groups into which scientists divide themselves when 
they become reflective in regard to their postulates. The 
central group, which does not despair of scientific realism, may 
feel that it is right or, at least, on the right road, but it is 
unable to give very cogent and definite reasons for the faith 
which is in it. If percepts are personal and we know only 
these immediately, how can our knowledge be other than 
personal? is a question which rocks science to its foundation. 
Because of this, it falls an easy prey to idealism, although 
its natural tendency is realistic. 

To conclude, science begins its development within the 
distinctions of common sense, but is forced to deviate more 
and more from the standpoint of Natural Realism. Mind 
and mental control become an ever greater factor, and percep- 
tion a mere means to the knowledge of physical processes. 
Hence, when reflection upon the nature and reach of the 
knowledge achieved by science arises. Natural Realism is 
rejected as an outgrown standpoint. With the relinquishment} 
of this primitive attitude, science becomes a prey to doubt. 
While the realistic outlook still dominates, idealistic motives 
increase in number and in influence. A compromise which 
consists in the contrast between percept and physical thing 
ensues, but is left vague on the cognitive side. Consequently, 
the problem of knowledge becomes ever more insistent; until 
this is settled, it is felt that the facts and theories of science 
cannot be interpreted. Doubt arises even in regard to the 
objective import of its conclusions. How can objects be 
known if they are not perceived? Thus science forces the 
human mind once for all beyond its primitive outlook and 
gives the setting and materials for the unavoidable struggle 
between idealism and a critical restatement of realism. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 

WE HAVE seen how, upon reflection, Natural Realism 
breaks down. The common, external world, supposedly 
I open to the inspection of all, loses its definiteness and certainty 
and becomes more and more hypothetical, while the personal 
element gains in strength and assurance. It is the movement 
of the inner, personal sphere upon the outer, common sphere 
which we shall call the Advance of the Personal. The Advance 
of the Personal does not necessarily lead to idealism, but it 
does result in the recognition of the personal element in knowl- 
edge and raises questions which cannot be answered without 
a thorough analysis of the individual's experience. 

With the Advance of the Personal, the old contrast — 
cherished in the heart of Natural Realism — between the physi- 
cal world, which directly fronts the individual, and the inner 
Y sphere of images, ideas, and feelings, is reduced to a working- 
i distinction within the individuars experience; that is, within 
\ the personal. The personal in this large sense covers both 
; those experiences which are usually considered personal, or 
\ private, and those which are regarded as common. The one 
\ common world accordingly transforms itself into as many 
oi worlds as there are individuals. Yet at this new level, the 
' question as to the nature of knowledge becomes ever more 
pressing. It alone offers to lead the individual into a common 
and independent world, transcending the isolation which the 
Advance of the Personal threatens to bring in its wake. 
The application of the term ''personal,'' in this generic 
^j sense, to all experiences needs further examination. We hear 
so much of ''experience-as-such," or "experience-in-general," 
that the assertion that experience is always personal, common- 
place as it is from one point of view, becomes radical if 
pushed to its logical result. In the following pages, I shall 
seek to justify the analysis given below: 
Personal Experiences 
Outer sphere Inner sphere 

Social Private Social Private 



^ 



49 



^ 



50 CRITICAL REALISM \ 

Such a division, representing as it does the triumph of the 
personal meaning over the social, or common, in the outer 
sphere as well as in the inner sphere, stands for a pluralism 
which holds that no two minds can share the same experiences, 
whether these be ideas or things.^ This position may be desig- 
nated mental pluralism. It should be noted, first of all, that 
this position, which logically succeeds Natural Realism, is not 
metaphysical in character — although it may be identified with 
idealism by hasty thinkers who are anxious to arrive at a 
conclusion; it is, rather, a necessary and interesting reorganiza- 
tion of the meanings in an individual's experience, preparing 
him for a more fundamental attack on the problem of knowl- 
edge. The position involves a vital change in one's outlook on 
the world and on the nature of interpersonal relations. Again, 
this reorientation demands, not a denial of the social nature 
of the individual's experience, but a reinterpretation of the 
social, which cuts it loose from its customary associations with 
Natural Realism. 

With these qualifications in mind, let us pass to the reasons 
which justify the division above. How does the outer sphere, 
that of physical objects as perceived, become characterized 
as personal? By the aid of what motives is this meaning 
able to conquer in the face of the strong forces which work 
for the dominance of the social, or common, and — through 
this — of the impersonal and scientific? We must admit that 
the usual result of the conflict of the two opposed meanings 
is a drawn battle and a compromise. Points of view, quite 
antagonistic, are able to alternate in minds which are not 
critically reflective. Because of this lack of reflection, the 
conflict between the personal and the common is either wholly 
unrealized or veiled. It is surprising how often even the 
reflective resort to subterfuges to gloss over its existence. 
Logicians, who of all men ought to know better, are led by this 
pressure towards the impersonal and common to take its 
existence in a literal sense for granted. We, on the contrary, 
believe that the reality of the conflict between the personal and 
the common should be brought out clearly and emphasized as 

1 This is another point at issue between Critical Realism and the New Realism. It is partly 
for this reason that I have developed the topic so fully. 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 51 

of singular importance. The whole superstructure of epis- 
temology may turn upon the attitude taken toward this 
question. 

Let us examine again the distinction between the thing and 
its appearance to the individual. We say that the thing 
appears under certain conditions in such and such a way, i.e., 
it is modified by factors as real as itself, and we tend to con- 
sider this appearance as almost, if not quite, as real as the 
thing itself. There seems to be some vague notion of trans- 
mission or of modified presence. Consequently, the appear- 
ance is inseparable from the thing which appears and has, 
supposedly, the same sort of reality. Now the characteristic 
attitude toward the thing is that of realism ; and there can be 
no doubt that the meanings of this attitude qualify the 
appearance also in a hesitant fashion. They meet and 
mingle with the personal factor, although they do not 
coalesce with it. The term *' appearance " is thus ambiguous; 

\ it swings between the common and independent, and the 
personal. Accordingly, to the dualism of Natural Realism — 
the event of perceiving and the physical thing — is added this 
third element, the appearance of the thing, which seems to 
intervene between the other two. The appearance implies 
the thing, but that which is immediately given is the appear- 
ance and not the thing. Have we good reason to believe 
that appearances are necessarily personal? 

In discussing the appearance and its conditions, we must 
perforce review some of the ground covered in the critique of 
Natural Realism. The point of interest is now somewhat 
different, however. We are concerned with the personal 
character and connection of the appearances of things. We 
must not forget, however, that the method of approach 
connects the appearance with physical factors in a causal way 
and, therefore, it must be as real as they are. And the 

I reverse is also true ; physical things must be as real as appear- 
ances. One cannot be accepted without the other. We need 
not recapitulate the many reasons which led us to hold that 
percepts or appearances are psychical. We also leave it as a 

, later problem, to be met frankly, to define in a definite way 

|i what we must mean by the psychical. 



52 CRITICAL REALISM ^ 

We have already warned the reader against the misuse of i 
the Advance of the Personal characteristic of the idealist.] 
Because appearances are personal and intervene between the! 
individual percipient and the physical thing, it does not 
follow that we have any less reason to believe in the existence 
of the physical thing. An effect cannot be more real than the 
cause. So long as we retain the contrast, we must remain 
realists. The interesting thing is that we are no longer certain 
how we can become aware of physical objects. We supposed 
that we were immediately aware of them, but we now realize 
that such an apprehension is impossible. The common-sense 
antithesis between a thing and its appearance is now seen to 
hold between a standard appearance and a secondary appear- 
ance. It is thus a contrast within the individual's experience 
which masquerades as one between an independent real and 
its appearance to the individual. Yet these couples have this 
much in common, that they are connected internally by a 
causal relation. That which is immediately apprehended does 
not prove to be self-sufficient. The baffling fact is that 
its conditions as soon as we apprehend them turn out to be 
conditioned. Perception can never reach the thing, but only 
its appearances; and the attempt to get beyond appearance 
in this sense by means of perception is quite as futile as the 
effort of Tantalus to obtain water to quench his thirst. If 
we are to arrive at physical things, it must be by means of 
knowledge, and knowledge must be other than perception. 
We do not as yet know what knowledge is, and, until we do, 
the doubt will not down whether it is right to assume that 
there are things of which our thing-experiences are appearances. 
Is not the contrast purely empirical, and have we any sufficient 
reason to regard it important for epistemology ? With the 
breakdown of Natural Realism, this doubt is born. Its 
strength lies in the identification of knowledge with presenta- 
tion, which it inherits from the older view. So long as the 
theory of knowledge characteristic of the lower level is accepted, 
it is impossible to understand how we could ever know things 
in contrast to their appearances.^ The apparent strength of 



' So far as I am able to grasp his position, this is the conclusion to which FuUerton has come ;| 
in hig inadequate, yet charmingly written book, *'The World We Live In." Hence he denies 
the existence of anything but appearances. 



, 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 53 

Natural Realism turns out to be its greatest weakness. 
In order to leave no weak point in our argument for mental 
pluralism, we shall first seek out all the reasons for the belief 
that individuals cannot share in any literal sense the same 
thing-experiences. The most natural view in regard to the 
affiliations of percepts, and that which has been generally held 
in both philosophy and psychology, is that percepts are 
inseparable from the inner sphere of organic sensations, images, 
ideas, and memories. There are specific reasons for this 
position, such as we shall detail later, and it is also supported 
by the feeling that an individual's experience is unitary. No 
evident line of demarcation runs through our experience and 
divides it into that which is common and that which is personal. 
We pass from thing-experiences to memories without sensing 
any boundary between them. When we regard them as 
\ experiences they seem to stand on the same footing. They 
^ occupy the focus of our attention successively and are qualita- 
tively different in content, but they possess no labels which 
mark them off as private and social respectively. Inferences 
and meanings and classifications mingle so intimately with our 
experiences that it is not always easy to separate the secondary 
from the primary. But whqn this is done by dint of effort, it 
is realized that, at first, the individual's experiences come 
neither as common nor as personal, i.e., that they do not 
possess either qualification as an indelible and primitive 
attribute. Hence, the conclusion that the division of the 
individual's experience into spheres, one of which is consid- 
ered private and the other common, is the result of judgment 
and may, therefore, be wrong or wrongly interpreted. Let us 
examine, then, the reasons for regarding percepts as per- 
sonal and intimately connected with the inner sphere of 
feelings and dispositions. 

Percepts are judged to be dependent on the position of the 
individual's body. When A stands ten feet away from an 
object and B only two feet, they have decidedly different 
thing-experiences. This difference in the content of their 
experiences they become aware of by conversation or by 
interchange of place. The percept is, accordingly, considered 
a function of the position of the body; and since no two 



54 CRITICAL REALISM 

individuals can have exactly the same position, their percepts, 
or thing-experiences, must differ. 

Again, percepts are, in some sense, functions of the sense- 
organs involved. Physiology and psychology, by means of 
their detailed studies, have made this mediation undeniable; 
yet common sense, also, is aware of this dependence. We 
need not enlarge on this connection since we have discussed 
it already in another context. But the sense-organs of 
individuals are as distinct numerically as their bodies. Must 
not, then, their percepts be numerically distinct? Once 
Natural Realism is given up and mediation is accepted, thing- 
experiences multiply until they equal the percipients in num- 
ber. Even were they alike in content, they would be numeri- 
cally separate. And it is, besides, very improbable, to say the 
least, that the sense-organs of even two individuals would be 
functionally identical; rather is the similarity which exists 
between the percepts of individuals to be considered remarkable 
and explainable only by the delicacy of heredity. 

Furthermore, percepts are functions not only of the position 
of the body and of the activity of the sense-organs but also 
of the nervous system. The statement that percepts are 
functions of the brain need not be interpreted to mean that 
a causal relation exists between them. Experiment and 
observation have rendered undeniable simply the fact that 
percepts are functions of the brain, using the term, function, 
in its mathematical sense. If so, percepts must be as distinct 
numerically as individuals are. 

Psychology teaches us that percepts are conditioned not 
only by purpose and interest, but also by the past experience 
of the individual percipient. It is at this point that the 
modern idealist must modify Berkeley's doctrine of the origin 
of percepts (ideas). They cannot be merely passive effects 
produced in finite spirits by external agency; effects, in a 
qualified sense, of external agency they must be, but the 
individual's mind is a co-factor in their production. The 
stimulus passes into this new and denser medium and is trans- 
formed. A percept, in other words, is an achievement and 
not a mere gift. It is the product of past attempts to har- 
monize more or less conflicting data and can be understood 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 55 

only when treated historically. The recognition that a per- 
cept involves the time-factor led formerly to the view that it 
was a concretion of sensations and images. Such a theory 
does not do justice to the unity and the purposive character 
of the percept. So far as the situation permits, they are 
standardized and moulded upon the dominant meanings 
which rule the physical world as man thinks it. Percepts, 
in short, imitate things; they absorb inferential elements and, 
as they do so, pass progressively from the transiency of sen- 
sation to the apparent perdurableness of objects. Because 
of this standardization, however, the type tends to override 
divergencies and peculiarities. The percipient both omits 
and adds. Impressionistic art represents a revolt against 
this inevitable tendency to perceptual habits, much as realism 
in literature seeks to force attention to life as it is in con- 
tradistinction to what complacent optimism dreams that it 
is. Our conclusion must be that percepts are constructions 
which have a history, and this history makes their abstraction 
from individual minds factually impossible.^ 

Once more, the capacity for fine motor adjustments and 
manipulations varies widely. This fact is so patent and so 
generally recognized that I need not defend it in detail. Now, 
percepts are more intimately related to the motor side of 
experience than is supposed by those who have not given atten- 
tion to the problem. Percepts are sensori-motor products. 
Even Kant saw that our perception of space could not be 
separated from the fact of movement. What may be called 
the sensory content of our percepts is important, — I do not 
wish to be understood to belittle it, — but so are the meanings 
which arise in connection with our bodily activities and motor 
adjustments to stimuli. Here again, we are face to face with 
individual factors in perception which even the idealist must 
recognize and somehow explain. Evidently, perception is 
not a mere passive presentation, but a construction whose 
genetic elements can be partially traced. 

Finally, let us call to mind that percepts are continuous 
1 1 with feelings and with the so-called organic sensations. The 

} Bergson's value as a thinker rests in large measure upon his recognition of the personal in 
experience. 



S6 CRITICAL REALISM 

impressive growth of the impersonal mechanical view of 
physical nature has operated in the direction of an expulsion 
of feeling. Once vaguely objective, feeling is now considered 
subjective or personal. Science regarded it as a fog which 
the sun of reason must drive from the face of things. Artist 
and poet have protested in vain against this rejection of the 
veil of feeling-values which for so long draped nature. We 
are not concerned at present with the truth of either side, — in 
a sense both views are true, — but with the relation of the 
problem to perception. Is not the distinction of the scientist 
a logical one ruled by a purpose? Do not inference and 
cognitive meanings dominate in it? Can it, therefore, be 
retroactive and dictate to perception as such ? To answer the 
last question in the affirmative is to be non-empirical. Per- 
cepts are certainly suffused with the individual's feelings. The 
winds sound cold in March even while we are in well 
heated houses. But how can this be if there exists a chasm 
between percept and feeling? Yet feelings, although objec- 
tive so far as immediate experience is concerned, are universally 
accounted personal. Again, an argument from continuity can 
be employed from the side of the organic sensations to indicate 
the personal character of percepts. In a sense, this mode of 
approach supplements the argument from feeling because 
of the seeming closeness of organic sensation and feeling. 
Granted that the clearness and discriminative distinctness of 
the sense-basis of percepts increases as we pass from organic 
sensation to the olfactory, gustatory, auditory, and visual 
fields, is there a psychological or a biological reason to assert 
a discontinuity in the series? When used cognitively they 
may give us information about different objects, but that is 
not the point in question. If there is no break, then one 
end of the series cannot be personal while the other is common. 
The closer examination of perception has thus confirmed 
the Advance of the Personal. Every percept has unique 
conditions which cannot be duplicated. The position of the 
individual, the distance from the object, the structure of the 
sense-organs, the activity of the nervous system are some of 
the physical conditions of the percept which render it unique. 
Here we evidently advance from the impersonal to the 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 57 

personal, from nature as it is in itself to nature as it appears 
to the individual. The past history of the individual, his 
dominant interests, the particular purpose and mental context 
of the time also play their part as conditions which he who 
is skeptical of the external factors must admit. A glance at 
both sets of conditions brings into prominence the individual 
reference. Psychology has long recognized the personal char- 
acter of the percept and so, usually, has philosophy, except 
where the problem of common knowledge has made it 
timorous. We may conclude, therefore, that percepts are 
personal and that the external world, so far at least as it is 
immediately experienced, differs from individual to individual. 
No two individuals can possibly have numerically the same 
thing-experiences, even though it works ordinarily to make 
that assumption, as we have seen in our descriptive study 
of Natural Realism. 

A further question might be raised at this point because 
of its epistemological interest and because of a curiosity we 
all feel in regard to the experiences of other persons. How 
far are the thing-experiences of individuals similar when had 
under like conditions? Probably the natural tendency is 
to assume a greater similarity than actually exists. This is 
because we are outward-looking and ruled by general terms 
and interests. We live in a world of meanings and indications 
rather than in a world of concrete content. The merely per- 
ceptual is incommunicable in much the way that feeling is, 
and drops into the background when the situation stresses 
the social. General terms and purposes are like coarse sieves : 
they allow the finer, more individual, phases to escape. The 
greater part of our lives we are, perhaps, unaware of this 
waste in transmission from self to self, yet a little reflection 
would surely make us conscious of it. The poet delights us 
because he can transmit his experience better than we can 
ours, and also because his experience is fuller and more varied. 
His words absorb, as it were, the delicate nuances of feeling 
and perception and make them capable of transference. But 
even while rendering his experiences, in a sense common 
property, he convinces us of their uniqueness. The artist 
gives humanity a voice, but at the same time deepens its 



S8 CRITICAL REALISM 

isolation. Now what the artist accompUshes without pur- 
posing it, the philosopher must do reflectively. He must 
force upon mankind a sense of the personal source of knowledge. 
We have seen that the external conditions of perception can 
be only partially duplicated. This approximation is much 
less attainable as regards the internal, or historical, conditions. 
To what degree are the brains of individuals similar? Their] 
past history? Their dominant interests? Their purposes?; 
Were all the effective conditions similar, we should be forced . 
to postulate the similarity of the results. But how can this! 
be? The universe appears to focus itself in a multiplicity of 
centres qualitatively different in character — how different it 
is for experience to say. Since we cannot, if our argument 
for the Advance of the Personal hold, place two percepts side 
by side to compare them when they exist in separate minds, 
we are left with only indirect means, such as language and 
conduct, to judge their similarity. How far such instruments 
carry us towards a solution of this problem must remain an 
open question. 

Thus far the Advance of the Personal upon the outer 
sphere has been successful. It is true that the common, 
or impersonal, has retreated in good order and taken up its 
position in the physical world of which the individual is 
supposed to have percepts, but such a retreat is an irretrievable 
disaster for Natural Realism. If realism is to be saved, it 
must disembarass itself of its immediatism; i.e., the physical 
object can no longer be regarded as immediately present in 
perception. Unfortunately, idealism has too often considered 
the Advance of the Personal a final stage instead of a reflective 
movement which clears the ground for the real struggle 
between idealism and a mediate realism. The problem passes 
from perception to conception. The query will no longer down 
whether the things of the physical world of which science speaks, 
in which the meanings * ^common' ' and ' ' independent ' ' take ref- 
uge, are not ideals, types even more of the nature of constructs 
than our percepts are. Science, as we saw, is inclined more 
and more to admit that its objects are conceptual and not 
perceptual; but it asserts that, if they are constructs they are 
constructs controlled by facts and necessary methods. The 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 59 

more consciously and fearlessly science moves to this new 
standpoint away from common sense, the more it disagrees 
with the statement of Hume, ''We do not, generally speaking, 
suppose external objects to be different from our perceptions; 
but only attribute to them different relations, connections and 
durations/' {Treatise, p. 68.) We do, in science, assign to 
things relations, connections, and durations different from 
those we assign to our percepts; but we also judge that they 
are different in other regards. The Advance of the Personal 
upon the world as perceived has, therefore, done two things: 

: It has brought out in a tensional way the distinction between 
the impersonal process of nature and the individual's personal 
percepts; and it has made idealism a possibility. 

The level at which we have arrived can be illustrated 
very well by the following example. ''When ten men look at 
the sun or moon," said Reid, "they all see the same individual 
object." "But not so," Hamilton replies, "the truth is that 
each of these persons sees a different object." (Quoted from 
Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism, Yol, II, p, 165.) Evidently, 
the two Scottish philosophers occupy different standpoints. 
How shall we characterize them? Ward's interpretation 
follows his theory of the relation between the individual expe- 
rience and the common empirical knowledge of the race — 
"Experience" with a capital E. Individual experience is 
primary and antedates intersubjective intercourse, but is 
corrupted by the latter. Psychology deals with experience 
in the first sense, the living experience of a given individual; 
natural science with Experience-in -general. Let us now note 
his application of this theory to the divergent positions of 
Hamilton and Reid. "It is obvious that they are here at 
different standpoints: Reid at that of universal, Hamilton 
at that of individual, experience. In Hamilton's sense, not 
one of the ten sees the sun; in Reid's, 'the same individual 
object' which all mean is not equivalent to the immediate 

^ experience of any one. Hamilton is right in so far as each 
concrete experience has its own concrete object; Reid in so 
far as common experience relates all these concrete objects to 
one phenomenon." Is this interpretation, which chimes in 

I with his own distinctions, the right one? Hamilton's position 



6o CRITICAL REALISM 



^ 



is correctly assigned, it represents what we have designated 
the Advance of the Personal. But does Reid's statement 
reflect the attempted foundation of a realism which admits the 
multiplicity of individual thing-experiences and seeks to 
transcend them? Or is it more expressive of Natural Realism? { 
Now there can be no doubt that Hamilton's position represents ; 
a step in advance of Reid; he saw the complexity of the 
problem of perception as the philosopher of common sense did . 
not. Hence, the more plausible explanation of these two 
contradictory statements is to regard them as representing 
two levels in reflective development instead of individual and 
universal experience respectively. Man begins with a realism, 
and only afterwards, as a result of the contradictions which 
arise, does he realize that thing-experiences are unique for 
each individual. Ward begins with the organic character 
of the individuars experience and seeks to explain the rise 
of dualism by a misconception. His argument seems to 
us ungenetic. The isolation of the fields of experience of 
individuals is a fact of which knowledge is only slowly 
achieved. 

A large share of the difficulty experienced in discussions of 
perception is due to the associations of the term. There is a 
reference to that which perceives, to an act or event called 
perception and to that which is perceived. Common sense 
assumes that it is the individual who perceives, and that it 
is something as real as the individual which is perceived. 
Perception is thus an act which holds of the individual as a 
whole. But the psychologist thinks of perception as a process 
which goes on in the mind of the individual, and this process 
includes the self which perceives and the presentation which is 
perceived. The self is no longer to be identified with the 
individual as a whole. Such a process is the event of percep- 
tion which is caused by the interaction of the psycho-physical 
organism and a stimulus from the physical world. The 
question which confronts us is this : Must we give up the view 
of perception encouraged by Natural Realism and adopt that 
held by psychology? 

Suppose we now take it as proved that two individuals 
cannot have the same thing-experiences: how do they discover 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 6i 

a correspondence between them, and why do they tend to 
regard them as identical? 

It will be noted that the question presupposes interpersonal 
intercourse although it does not prejudice its nature and 
extent, which remains a purely empirical problem. We have 
already emphasized the fact that individuals are not in a 
position to ascertain how extensive the divergence in texture 
of their thing-experiences may be, except in extreme cases like 
color-blindness, because they cannot place their experiences 
side by side for comparison as they can two of their own. 
Hence, they are compelled to resort to t^sts of grouping and of 
arrangement in series. Ultimately, these tests base them- 
selves on perceived spatial relations whose correspondence is 
taken for granted. These spatial relations themselves are, 
however, founded on organic activities. When two people walk 
together or lift up their hands together, they cannot doubt 
the correspondence of these movements. Correspondence 
along this line has, moreover, its pragmatic tests. Movements 
are overt, and people can, therefore, come to an agreement 
in regard to them. Interpreted activities are the primary 
source of communication. The communication of adults is 
ordinarily so satisfactorily mediated by language that we are 
likely to forget this fact, but observation of young children 
brings it home to us. To return, then, to other than broad 
spatial correspondences: if, for example, the sound, h, is 
experienced by one individual as higher in pitch than the 
sound, a, and the corresponding sound, h^ is experienced by 
another individual as higher than a\ this serial relation is 
considered a test for the absolute quality of the sounds in their 
experience. Likewise, if the colors in the spectrum are 
grouped for me in an order correspondent to their arrangement 
for you, our terminology will agree. Theoretically, at least, 
the name is determined by the spatial order and not by the 
colors. If I saw green where another saw yellow and yellow 
where he saw green, we would be unable to discover the 
exchange. What reason, then, have we to believe that nature 
is clothed for different individuals in the same colors? So 
long as the corresponding thing-experiences had always the 
corresponding color, no matter what this color might be, the 



62 CRITICAL REALISM 

difference in the color-quality could not be detected. Now, 
correspondences are only roughly examined in practical life. 
It is for this reason that color-blindness remained unremarked 
for so long a time. More accurate examination, accompanied 
by attempts at reproduction as in painting and in music, 
usually discloses differences that had not been noticed. The 
world of the artist has more and finer gradations than that 
of the ordinary man who has neither his training nor his 
natural capacity for distinguishing delicate tones. But lack 
of fine chromatic and auditory distinctions represents only one 
extreme. It is quite possible that the color, sound, and taste 
experiences of individuals do differ in nuances that no tests are 
capable of revealing because they presuppose these experiences 
as ultimate starting-points. The principle to bear in mind is 
that individuals can test the content of their perceptions to 
determine their correspondence only indirectly by means of 
relations in series or by attempts at reproduction, and that the 
latter method furnishes a test for discrimination only. Such 
tests rest upon, and are hound up with, movement for which 
passive content is unimportant. The perception of movement 
is a perception of a relation or a successive series of relations. 
Hence, we seek correspondence and not similarity. In other 
words, order dominates over passive quality. Recent 
works on genetic psychology have rightly emphasized the 
importance of imitation in the establishment of communica- 
tion between child and nurse. Likewise, the behavior of 
parents, where it fits in with and continues the child's own 
efforts, furnishes a basis for the child's interpretation of the 
experiences of others. (C/. Stout, Groundwork of Psychology, 
Chap. XIV.) Our conclusion must, consequently, be that 
sameness or commonness as applied to our thing-experiences is 
a meaning which grows up in each individual's consciousness 
naturally but mistakenly. Since men are not philosophers, 
any other more reflective view could not be expected. At 
first, men believe that they indicate things to each other 
when they point. It is only much later — for the majority, 
never — that they realize that they indicate by means of a 
gesture perceived by another the place in that other's experience 
of the percept which corresponds to their own. 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 63 

At the level of Natural Realism, then, at which we all 
ordinarily live, our thing-experiences, which we mistakenly 
regard as independent things, possess the meaning of same- 
ness. The very nature of interpersonal communication, 
as we have seen, renders this attribution inevitable. With 
the Advance of the Personal over the field of outer experience, 
sameness is forced to give way to correspondence. When the 
problem of the nature of an individual's knowledge of other 
selves comes up for discussion, the manner in which a percept 
is duplicated and treated as in two consciousnesses at the 
same time will be found very interesting. My percept must 
be substituted for yours in my thought of your experiences. 
In this sense only, are my thing-experiences at once personal 
and common. Always they are personal, — that is the genus, — 
but sometimes these personal experiences are considered 
common, som.etimes private. These are, as it were, species 
thrust upon us by the social character of our life. Let us now 
pass to a similar examination of concepts, or meanings. 

Developed thing-experiences are full of meanings. These 
meanings concern not only their ow^n individual content but 
their relations to other things and to the individual who is 
said to perceive them. We have examined the more impor- 
tant generic meanings which are characteristic of Natural 
Realism. It is the presence of these which made Reid regard 
perception as an act involving judgment. In fact, no hard- 
and-fast line can be drawn between perception and conception. 
Interpretation plays its part, but not always consciously and 
reflectively. Thus meanings mingle with, and form an integral 
component of, thing-experiences. Hence, the same question 
which came up for discussion in regard to percepts must be 
asked in regard to meanings. Are meanings personal? If so, 
the content of knowledge must be personal. 

Let us begin our investigation with space, which seems 
to lie so tantalizingly between perception and conception. 
It is this hybrid character which has led to so many fallacies 
in the treatment of space. It is this fact which has made it 
so easy to regard space as common, even after it has been ad- 
mitted that individuals cannot possess the same percept. 
The late Professor James fell, at least temporarily, into this 



64 CRITICAL REALISM 

error. And there can be no doubt that Kant confused per-j 
ceptual and conceptual space in the Transcendental Aesthetic.^ 
Perceptual space is reenforced by active motor experiences 
of relations. Cooperative movements furnish continual tests 
of agreement so that spatial standardization and acknowl- 
edged correspondence reach a high development. Space 
becomes less a passive attribute of thing-experiences than a 
meaning, a tool for their mutual organization and a scheme 
to aid in mutual reference. The fact of its use as a means to 
secure cooperation stresses its assumed commonness. Added 
to this is its lack of vivid content, the absence of features 
interesting in and for themselves. At the level of Natural 
Realism, these semi-perceptual space meanings form the web 
of physical things. Because of the profoundly cooperative 
nature of such a space, it seems even more primary and 
impersonal than thing-experiences and, consequently, resists 
the Advance of the Personal with more success. Moreover, 
measurement enters to lift spatial relations beyond perceptual 
perspective into what science claims to be knowledge. We 
must remember, however, that knowledge about distances is 
not the same as either perceptual or conceptual space. Thus 
a little reflection convinces us that the hypothesis of the 
actual common possession of space as experienced is not re- 
quired. Besides, when we examine the spatial estimates of 
individuals, we are immediately struck by differences which 
usually pass unnoticed. Form, size, and distance are experi- 
enced differently. Science long ago discovered the fact of 
individual variations in the estimation of perceptual space 
and seeks to overcome it by the superposition of objects. 
Furthermore, psychology informs us that the spatial con- 
tent which functions in an object varies greatly from 
individual to individual. The visual may dominate in one, 
the kinaesthetic in another. 

The Advance of the Personal to the realm of meanings 
involves an alteration in outlook at least as profound as that 
which has occurred for the outer world. Meanings are even 
more social and standardized than percepts, since they are the 
products of cooperation and of communication. They imply 
the past activity of the race as well as the intercourse of 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 65 

contemporaries and thus seem to possess an immortality not 
granted to the individual. We shall find the same natural 
tendency to realism at the level of thought as at that of 
perception. We say that we have the same meaning in mind, 
much as we speak of seeing the same thing. 

The truth is that we are as dualistic and realistic in con- 
ceiving as in perceiving. Both attitudes are modeled on the 
same realistic persuasion and have the same genetic basis. 
Perception and conception, percept and concept are less 
separated than is sometimes supposed. The distinctness of 
the terms is not paralleled by like distinctness of the material 
denoted. Objects which we perceive are at the same time 
conceived. It is for this reason that the object conceived 
is looked upon as identical with the object perceived. It is 
only our relation to it which has changed markedly — how, we 
should probably be unable to say. In one instance, we assert 
that we perceive Mars; in the other instance, we claim to 

' know, conceive, or judge about Mars. 

Simple demonstrative judgments like the assertion, ''That 
is a field of rye,'' are expressed within the realistic outlook 

' of common sense. The attention is riveted on a part of the 
landscape, a field covered with greenish growth. Perhaps 

,' my companion and I have been unable to decide from a dis- 

; tance whether the vegetation is rye or wheat. We go nearer 

- and note the rankness of the growth and its specific color and 
jj decide that it is rye. The growth is now known as a certain 

- kind of grain with distinctive characteristics. These mean- 
', ings cohere with the thing-experience and develop it. Judg- 
i ment is evidently not a process which is referred to the head, 

' but is staged in the world of things.^ When once accepted, 
\ meanings are as objective and common as the thing-experiences 
j with which they coalesce and which are taken as common. 
i They are absorbed by the outer sphere. To use our example, 
^ the field is now experienced as a field of rye. Reflection, 
^ having accomplished its function, drops out of sight, and the 
1 external world settles down to a new immediacy. 

Communication so qualifies ideas or meanings that they 
are from the first suffused with the sense of commonness and 

1 Ideas are no more and no less to be referred to the head than the world as perceived. 



66 CRITICAL REALISM 

social objectivity. It is our idea of God or of virtue rather 
than my idea. The mass of people think not as individuals 
but as groups, the greater part of their lives. At the lowest 
level the personal note does not intrude at all. Ideas are 
vaguely objective, and their social currency is taken for 
granted. We suppose ourselves to have the same meanings 
and to think the same thing. And w^ do not see any ambiguity 
in the word ' ' same. ' ' 

Thus concepts and ideas are standard objects of a peculiar 
kind, gradually developed in social intercourse and function- 
ally connected with a supposedly common world. It is not 
strange, then, 'that the attitude which we have called Natural 
Realism is transferred to them as a part of their birth-portion. 
We are not aware of any mysterious passage from an inner 
to an outer sphere of existence in judgment. A theorist who 
despairingly asks how an idea in his head can qualify a thing 
in the real world has distorted the assumptions of judgment 
by the injection of false distinctions. Things and meanings 
must be on the same level. But we have been led to assert 
that thing-experiences are numerically distinct and even dif- 
ferent in texture for individuals. Is it not probable that this 
distinctness holds for meanings also? Cannot the meaning 
** personal*' subordinate the meaning ^^ social'' in the sphere 
of concepts as it did in that of thing-experiences? 

In the first place, the matrix of meanings is perception. 
Of course this latter term must be taken in a broad way to 
include relatively immediate experiences, inner as well as 
outer. It seems, therefore, absurd to expect a change in 
existential nature between the plant and the flower. If one 
is personal the other also must be. There is no need for us 
to enter into the genetic history of concepts and to show how 
analysis, abstraction, and synthesis play their part in the 
development of concepts. Logic and psychology have been 
engaged in examining and stating the steps and factors in 
the process. Suffice it to state that empiricism has won an 
overwhelming victory over any dualistic rationalism. To 
some, perhaps, this statement may appear dogmatic, but, 
surely, only if they confuse empiricism with sensationalism. 
Few, I take it, would to-day defend innate ideas. They 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 67 

would accept Hume's test/ with the quaUfication that con- 
cepts are not mere copies of impressions but presuppose com- 
plex processes of analysis and of interpretative inference. 
Even so, the personal character of the matrix must tinge 
the product. We shall have occasion to examine adv^ersely 
the belief that individuals can achieve numerically the same 
meanings when we consider the postulates of logic. Words 
come between us and our meanings and lead us to assume a 
greater agreement and definiteness than exists. That holds 
here which we found in the case of perception; our everyday 
purposes require only a general identity and, therefore, assume 
a complete identity. This means that their tests are not 
exacting and that there is a natural tendency to assume 
a literal commonness. 

Again, meanings, like percepts, are in a sense functions of 
I the interests of the individual; i, e., they are in active relation 
' with that which is most characteristically personal. In 
other words, meanings are teleological and reflect the point 
; of view and dominant purpose of the thinker. While one 
' aspect of an object may appeal to me, another feature or 
relation of it may engross your attention. When any recent 
1 important event is up for discussion in a group of men repre- 
\ senting different professions, it is illuminating to note from 
I what different angles they view the occurence. Diversity 
rather than agreement prevails in their counsels. That 
such disagreement is usually a surprise to them brings out the 
point which we are seeking to make, that commonness is 
I simply a natural assumption which men make because they 
I are at once outward-looking and self-centred. What we 
] found to be true in the case of perception holds for concep- 
ition. Constructs do not develop of themselves; interests 
and purposes, usually of the most practical character, furnish 
the vital force and guide the growth. Those individuals 
whose occupations and habits of mind are most nearly 
'i alike achieve most similar results. Each trade and pro- 
fession has its special concepts made upon the model of 

1 "When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed with- 
put any meaning or idea, as is but too frequent, we need but to enquire, From what impression 
IS that supposed idea derived?" ("An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," p. 19, Open 
Court edition.) 



68 CRITICAL REALISM 

mutual interests. But the specialization of classes must not 
be thought to exclude those experiences and activities which 
are universal and give a common bond of agreement, yet the 
error of common sense is to be blind to the diversity and to 
regard the unity as a gift, not an achievement. 

Diversity and agreement are, then, limits between which . 
men fluctuate. Common sense — and I fear she is often; 
followed in this by philosophy — overemphasizes the agree- 
ment, while the poetic and the non-conformist temperaments 
realize the diversity. The introspective and reflective per- 
son is only too fully aware of the isolation of mind from mind 
and of how unique and inimitable are the peculiar shades of 
meaning which pass before his consciousness. He is less 
dominated by terms with their formal identity and persistence 
and seeks back of the superficial uniformity for the living and 
individualized movement of ideas. Here he comes in touch 
with the currents and eddies of consciousness in which concepts 
are born or in which they are transmuted. But we must not 
be led into mystical lengths. Men do understand one another, 
— this is shown by their cooperation and by science, — 
although comprehension does not require the toneless identity 
of ideas. 

Commonness in its defense appeals to logic, and to logic it 
shall go. Logic, like any other discipline, works within certain 
postulates which require careful interpretation. The investi- 
gation of these presuppositions is usually assigned to epis- 
temology. However, many writers take logic in so inclusive 
a sense that its more theoretical part concerns itself with an 
examination of the assumptions of formal and empirical logic. 
Recent usage favors this enlargement of outlook. Let us, 
then, in a critical way investigate such of the postulates of 
logic as are relevant to our present problem. 

According to Venn {Empirical Logic, Chap. I), the world] 
must be postulated as being essentially the same for all ob- j 
servers. Now the detailed examination of the nature and 
conditions of the perceptual world of the individual which we 
have already made precludes the possible truth of this postulate, 
unless the phrase ''essentially the same'' be interpreted very 
liberally. ''The same'' cannot mean here numerical identity; 






THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 69 

it may mean ''correspondent to the degree suggested by inter- 
course." The postulate becomes, thereupon, the expression of 
an ideal founded upon a purpose, that of intellectual co- 
operation. It is, in a sense, a fiction and must be so regarded if 
taken absolutely. Logic is a normative science, and its norms 
express the perfect fulfillment of hesitating fact. This postu- 
late^is, furthermore, not self -interpretative. Venn assumes 
that logic works within the outlook of common sense, and this 
assumption determines the meaning to be given the word, 
samey but the break-down of Natural Realism forces a new 
point of view and with it a new interpretation of the term. 
The forward movement of experience, stimulated by the need 
for consistency, can alone be the interpreter. Logic, like 
psychology, can aid this movement, but it cannot dictate to it. 

After the foregoing discussion, a second postulate can be 
treated more briefly. Logic takes for granted an identity of 
significance amongst those who intercommunicate. This 
identity may be a minimum actually, and logic as an art seeks 
i'to increase its extent, especially by its emphasis on definition. 
jWhen analyzed, this postulate dwindles down to the demand 
(that individuals comprehend one another. Such a compre- 
'hension is an empirical fact and must, therefore, be explained; 
jbut the assumption made by some logicians that an identity of 
■significance involves a numerical identity^ of concepts is a 
hypothesis and, as we have seen, unwarranted. It is a crude 
realism which refuses to entertain other possibilities. 

But the problem is more complicated than at first appears. 

JThe assumption of reference, or, in other words, the question of 

jknowledge, hovers in the background and supports a realistic 

interpretation of identity. The objects known must be the 

;jsame for all ; else there is no common knowledge and no common 

universe. The Advance of the' Personal upon the field of 

perception secured only an outpost, for the independent object 

^ separated itself from perception and linked its fortunes with 

^knowledge; otherwise idealism must have resulted. If, 

■however, knowledge is based upon concepts, and these are 

personal and not numerically identical, what becomes of the 

' _ _ 1 Logic has concern, not with existential or numerical sameness, but with sameness as exact 
^sitnilarity of content. These two meanings of sameness are often disastrously confused. 



70 CRITICAL REALISM 



? 



independent object ? And how is common knowledge possible ? 
It is not to be wondered at that the reaHstic tendencies and 
meanings of the human mind have raUied round judgment and 
intrenched themselves in the implications of knowledge. 

We do not as yet know what knowledge is. Hence we do 
not know that it involves the actual presentation to different 
minds of numerically the same objects. Unless this be 
assured, logic has no right to insist that the identity it sets up 
as an ideal is a numerical identity. Either knowledge is 
mediated by concepts or it is a unique gift independent of 
those constructive processes of interpretation with which it 
has usually been connected. Once percepts are considered 
personal, the intuitional view of knowledge loses its plausibility 
and must be adjudged a leap in the dark, justified only by the 
failure of mediate theories. And thinkers should not be too 
easily convinced of the impossibility of mediate theories of 
knowledge. 

We have seen every reason to believe that concepts are 
constructions of individual minds and numerically distinct for 
different individuals. There are thinkers who oppose this 
view, yet I am sure that their opposition is based on a 
misunderstanding. Let me give some further reasons for 
my belief. 

It is usually admitted that the empirical idea which arises 
in a mind when a word is understood cannot be exactly du- 
plicated in another mind because of the difference in outlook 
due to past experience. Thus far many of these thinkers 
would agree with the position advocated by me. But the case 
is different, they would maintain, with the logical idea, or 
meaning ; this is the same for all and is relatively independent 
of any particular thinker. In other words, they suppose that [ 
the ideal of logic is realized. Lotze went to the extreme of 
asserting the *' eternally-self -identical significance of ideas 
which always are what they are, whether or no . . . there | 
are spirits which by thinking them give them the reality 
of a mental event, '^ {Logic y sec. 317; quoted from Wolf, 
Studies in Logic.) We have here a very good example of a logi- | 
cal realism which is not much less naive than Natural Realism I 
itself. The nature of logical meaning has been a disputed 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 71 

point. The basis offered by associational psychology was so 
inadequate that strange theories like that of Bradley arose 
— theories for which "meaning consists of a part of the con- 
tent cut off, fixed by the mind and considered apart from the 
existence of the sign/' Recent psychology has departed from 
its nominalism and now regards meanings as primary. Alean- 
ings are empirical ideas controlled and standardized by intel- 
lectual interests. They are products of analysis and synthesis 
and are as much mental objects as thing-experiences are. To 
consider meanings as psychical existences involves a change 
of attitude and outlook which is secondary. Strictly speaking, 
the world of things which they qualify becomes mental at the 
same time. These points of view do not conflict, and the idea 
as meaning does not need to be quarried out of the idea as 
existence. Rebel though he was against psychology, Bradley 
could not escape the tyranny of its special point of view. 
Hence, meanings are considered homeless, mere wandering 
adjectives which have no abiding place. Quite the contrary is 
true. Meanings are unique personal experiences which are born 
in the minds of individuals and function there. Ordinarily, 
we do not view them as personal nor consider them as mental . 
Why, we have already explained. We move from meanings 
to their existence, not from existence to meanings released from 
all existential bonds. Much of the trouble logicians have found 
in their treatment of meanings has been due to their separation 
of thing-experiences from meanings, and to the tendency of 
the older psychology to keep mind to the level of images of a 
bare and uninterpreted sort. The remedy is a more adequate 
empiricism. 

Bradley's position, untenable as it is, is certainly an advance 
on the older tendency to hypostatize ideas. Such a hypos- 
tasis of concepts results from a misunderstanding. Because 
a concept, such as that of beauty, does not concern itself with 
^ time; it is supposed to be timeless. But a thing-experience 
J is experienced as relatively permanent, although we know that 
I it is transient. A concept, as an object of attention, may 
j disregard time and yet be as temporal as a feeling. When 
we say that we can have the same concepts over again, 
this does not mean that we have numerically the same 



72 CRITICAL REALISM 

concepts. The truth is, that we do not concern ourselves with 
any identity other than that of the content which we conceive. 
Suppose we are thinking of the abstract quaUty whiteness ; it is 
an object of a specific character which, as such, has neither 
spatial nor temporal relations. We can think of this object 
again and again just as we can think of a particular house or 
of an event in history. The *' sameness" applies to the object 
as content which we conceive. The primary fact upon which 
the supposed sameness rests is that the idea-object is not quali- 
fied by any relation to what is called the act of conception. 
The mechanism of the logical realism which we are criticising 
is exactly the same as that of Natural Realism. But just as 
that which is perceived is qualified as permanent and coramon 
although it is only a transient thing-experience of an individual, 
so a conceptual object, of whatever character, is also only the 
concept of an individual at some moment of time. The 
evanescent character of the idea-object does not appear as 
part of its content. We shall better understand this appar- 
ent paradox later on. These conceptual objects may be class- 
concepts or universals, abstract ideas, relations, events, or 
particular things. The difference between them lies in their 
nature, in what they are experienced as. As concepts, as per- 
sonal, they are on the same level of existence. There is, as 
we have seen, adequate reason to regard them as mental. 
If so, as existences they would be as temporary as thing- 
experiences on which they are genetically based.^ We must 
call attention to the fact that, here again, the problem of 
identity is complicated by that of knowledge. The social 
motive is especially strong. Because these conceptual objects 
are qualified as common, the tendency is to view them as 
independent of all individuals because they are, when so quali- 
fied, looked upon as independent of each. 

Another point: the concepts of which the logician speaks 
are abstractions which are seldom realized in thought under 
ordinary conditions. The sentence, or judgment, is the actual 
unit of thought, and even this more natural unit is bound up 
with the universe of discourse. The universals of which the 

1 It will be evident to the reader that I am opposing all forms of logical or Platonic realism. 
The "New Realism" on both sides of the ocean seems to me guilty of believing that, because the 
content of a concept contains no reference to time, the concept must be timeless. Does it follow? 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 73 

rationalist talks are too often fossils or, better, artifacts due to 
a special point of view. They correspond to the objects of 
living thought in individual minds much as museum specimens 
do to the free, live animal. Universals are supposed to be 
changeless entities which subsist out of space and time. 
Nothing could be less true. Universals grow through the 
activity of minds in society, and the concept of beauty of one 
generation is not that of another age. 

Let us, then, accept what the facts indicate and push 
bravely ahead. It is obvious that our argument requires 
of us the frank acceptance of mental pluralism, that no two 
minds can have numerically identical concepts or percepts. 
Since the problem of knowledge is not yet solved, this position 
cannot be called idealistic. Both epistemological idealism and 
realism remain as possibilities between which a decision must 
finally be made after experience in all its distinctions and 
implications is understood. Thus far the result of the Advance 
of the Personal has been, epistemologically speaking, negative 
more than positive. It has tended to discredit the view that 
knowledge of the physical world is the actual presence of a 
real and that the same impersonal real may be present to 
different minds. In short, it has been antagonistic to Natural 
Realism and to naive realism. Still another point : how shall 
we restate the postulate of logic which refers to the social 
identity of our meanings and judgments? It is a fact that 
when I make a judgment I expect others who have like 
materials to agree with me. My judgment lays claim to 
universality. Let us assert that the judgments of individuals 
correspond. It is in this sense that they understand one 
another. The degree of correspondence realized differs widely 
from individual to individual and exact correspondence is a 
norm, or ideal, rather than a fact. Furthermore, the tests 
of agreement are empirical, and simmer down to language 
and action. Let us examine this conception of correspondence 
a little more fully. 

In his larger Logic Bosanquet suggests, as a simile which 
I will help us to realize the paradox of reference, the follow- 
ing point of view. Suppose w^e assume that the world 
as known to each is constructed and sustained by his 



74 CRITICAL REALISM 

individual consciousness and that this holds true for 
each individual. *'Thus we might think of the ideas and 
objects of our private world rather as corresponding to, than 
as from the beginning identical with, those which our 
fellow-men are occupied in constructing, each within his own 
sphere of consciousness/' Unfortunately, he is inclined 
to regard as a simile what we regard as a fact. Elsewhere 
Bosanquet seems to consider the position that the many 
private worlds of individuals correspond, a conception from 
which logic must start. {The Essentials of Logic, p. 17.) 
He believes, however, that a real system appears, differently 
*' though correspondingly, in the centres of consciousness which 
are ourselves.'' Just here vagueness overtakes him, and we 
are left with questionings as to the nature of this real system 
and how it ''appears" in these private worlds. Neverthe- 
less, his frank recognition of the uniqueness of each individual's 
world is to be regarded a support of the argument developed 
in the present chapter. 

The Advance of the Personal has, then, led us to mental 
pluralism. Minds have correspondent meanings constructed 
by their own efforts though aided by cooperation, imitation, 
language. From this reflective standpoint, concepts must 
be considered existentially personal; that is, always the con- 
cept of some individual, even while they are qualified as 
common. Remembering our natural tendency to realism and 
the secondary character of the present critical perspective, 
we should not be surprised that meanings are treated as com- 
mon and rather impersonal objects of thought just as things ' 
are. The pressure of society, our knowledge of the social | 
origin of many of our concepts, our dependence on the inherited 
instrument called language with its dictionaries and authorita- 
tive usages, the intimate mingling of thoughts with things — 
all these factors work together to suffuse our concepts with 
the character of commonness. Those meanings which are 
evidently unique creations of our own do not obtain this 
sanction and are held apart as private. This subjective 
realm consists very largely of those experiences which will 
not fit into the socially accepted objective domain. Errors, ,: 
misconceptions, privately cherished ideas, personal ideals, etc., 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 75 

are adjudged private, while truths, estabhshed theories, 
and acknowledged standards of right and wrong are con- 
sidered common and objective. Critical logic, then, as well 
as psychology, is compelled to accept the division of the 
individual's experiences into those which are considered 
common and those adjudged private. From the reflective 
standpoint, these are simply species of the personal. 

A very prevalent confusion between social production and 
social existence is to-day to be found in both philosophy and 
sociology. Perhaps this misconception is due to a reaction 
against the ethical, economic, and political individualism of 
the eighteenth, and early part of the nineteenth, century. 
It is also, beyond doubt, the result of the objective monism 
of science in which individuality is lost in the causal nexus 
of the whole. Assuredly, however, a fallacious inference 
has been drawn. Social production does not necessarily 
involve social existence. Because my conceptions are unthink- 
able apart from my relations with my fellow-men, it surely 
does not follow that they are social possessions in the sense 
that a municipal lighting-plant is. Looked at genetically, 
my cerebral language-centre is a social product, but it has 
not a social, or common, existence. Genetic psychology and 
social ethics have made a commonplace of the fact that indi- 
viduals develop within a social environment; but it does not 
follow from this that individuals do not exist or that indi- 
vidual and society are aspects of the same thing. What is 
required is a clear understanding of the position opposed by 
these social enthusiasts. One cannot but have the suspicion 
at times that they are uncertain what, precisely, this may be. 
Is it egoism in the ethical sense of the term? But egoism is 
antithetic to altruism, not to mental pluralism. Is it indi- 
vidualism in political affairs? Individualism has socialism 
for its contrast -term ; and I am sure that the present position 
does not undermine socialism. Is it solipsism that they fear? 
Mental pluralism by very definition denies solipsism. What 
is needed is not vague statements to the effect that individuals 
cannot be separated or that they are aspects of one another, 
but definitions and analyses. 

Individuals develop in active relationship with one another 



76 CRITICAL REALISM 

in that organization which we call society. Society is but a 
name for these individuals in relations determined by their 
needs, interests, and inherited institutions. Hence, to deny 
the relations of individuals or the part played by social prod- 
ucts, such as language and political and industrial institutions, 
is evidently absurd *, but to refuse existence to the individuals 
who are in relation is equally nonsensical. We must study 
the nature of social relations to see how far the individual is 
separable from them. While man is by nature a political 
animal, this does not mean that he perishes as soon as removed 
from society, as a fish does when taken from its native element. 

Let us examine the terms ''society'' and ''the individuar' 
to see how far they are relative. It is a mistake to suppose 
that terms have the same degree of relativity. A subject 
implies a sovereign and a sovereign a subject. A parent sup- 
poses a child, and a child a parent ; but the implication is not 
so mutual. The parent may be dead, and the child remains 
a child. Shepherd implies sheep, but sheep do not always 
have a shepherd. It may be said that the sheep enter tem- 
porarily into a unique relation with the shepherd but that 
this does not affect their nature sufficiently to warrant 
a special term. Correlative to the shepherd would be the 
sheep-as-shepherded. In the case of the man, the occupation 
is significant enough to receive a name. But the man can 
turn to another occupation. The point which this example 
brings home is the relative externality of relations. In like 
manner, society stands essentially for a system of relations 
into which the individuals enter from their birth and in which 
they can best fulfill their being. But they can be removed 
from such group connections and exist like so many Crusoes. 
This isolation is possible because social relations are secondary 
and depend on biological and psychological individuality. 
But the individuals are changed by their isolation? No 
doubt; their identity, however, is not destroyed by the 
separation from their fellows. The degree of alteration 
remains an empirical question. 

The individual and society must be adjudged only semi- 
correlatives. This result supports the Advance of the Personal 
against the objection that the individual is an abstraction 



>i 



THE ADVANCE OF THE PERSONAL 77 

when considered apart from society. Such objections, which 
are so prevalent as to excuse what may seem to some the 
defense of the obvious, depend on the influence exerted by 
abstract monistic principles and the confusion of social causa- 
tion wdth social existence. Certain pragmatists who wish 
to escape all suspicion of solipsism are the worst offenders at 
present. The following passage illustrates very well what 
I mean. ''Not only in its origin, but in its continued develop- 
ment and operation must it [the individual consciousness] 
always be a function of the whole social situation of which 
it is born. However 'private' or 'individual' consciousness 
may be, it is never to be regarded as wholly or merely 
the function of an individual mind or soul or of a single 
organism or brain.'' Note the phrase "wholly or merely" 
which beclouds the issue. The confusion between social 
causal production and social existence is apparent in this 
quotation from Dewey. 

The realization that individuals are conditioned in their 
development, physical and mental, by their relations to other 
individuals and to the products of the cooperation of indi- 
viduals in the past, is but the recognition that nothing in the 
universe stands alone. Individuality does not imply isolation 
and complete self-sufficiency. The individual is conditioned 
by innumerable factors, yet he is a centre of relations and so 
highly organized and full of initiative that these relations lose 
significance when he is denied. In a word, individuality in- 
volves distinctness and relative autonomy, but not separation. 

The results of the foregoing analysis of the relation of the 
individual to society agree with the more introspective con- 
clusions W'hich preceded. It is a mistake to suppose that the 
facts stressed by social ethics, sociology, and social psychology 
are incompatible with the existential uniqueness and personal 
ownership of percepts, concepts, and feelings. The Advance 
of the Personal has, w^e may therefore conclude, met no objec- 
tion which is able to stay it.^ The worlds of individuals are 
microcosms, or small universes, which evolve side by side, yet 
never mingle in a literal sense. Each individual is, however, 

1 When we come to realize that the individual is more than his changing field of experience, 
this conclusion will be strengthened and at the same time seen in clearer light. I 



78 CRITICAL REALISM 

sure there are other minds and that he can communicate with 
them. There can be no doubt that this behef is justified and 
that the facts which support it are very intimate and tre- 
mendously important for the higher reaches of the individual's 
experience. But the theory of knowledge implicit in Natural 
Realism is too simple to account for the essential uniqueness 
of the content of the world as experienced by different persons. 
Commonness is forced to give way to correspondence. What, 
then, is knowledge? We have already begun to suspect that 
knowledge is not the actual presence of identical elements to 
different minds. 

Evidently mental pluralism is a reflective advance upon 
Natural Realism, but is not a final position. It should be 
regarded as a new and higher outlook which enables us to 
propound the proper questions to epistemology. Hence, 
mental pluralism, as here presented, must not be confused 
with pluralistic idealism. I shall now proceed to examine 
in detail the structure of the field of the individual's experience 
for the light it will throw on the nature of knowledge. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S 
EXPERIENCE 

THE mental pluralism at which we have arrived as a 
result of the Advance of the Personal is purely empirical 
in character. One point to the exclusion of all others was 
attended to, viz., the uniqueness and numerical distinctness 
of an individual's experiences. Problems concerning the 
structure of the total field of the individual's experience must 
now be taken up and closely studied. 

Let us, first of all, examine the interrelations of the dis- 
tinguishable elements of the field. Does any element play 
a dominant role so that it can be regarded as a sort of king 
among the others? In the past, philosophers have nearly 
always selected the self and given it such preeminence. For 
idealism, as a rule, the rest of experience depends upon the 
self as the dynamic centre of experience. Berkeley, for 
example, makes the self the active and creative pole of expe- 
rience; and Kant traces back the unity characteristic of 
experience to the Transcendental Ego. Of late, this type of 
theory has been severely criticised as untrue to the facts 
and founded on a priori notions rather than on empirical 
analysis. The ''self" of these theories is too much of a 
metaphysical entity external to, although supposedly explan- 
atory of, the actual field of experience. Emphasis has shifted 
from substances to processes within experience. There is 
even the suspicion that the unity of experience depends as 
much on the objects as on the self. The old, monarchical 
simplicity has given way before the realization of the demo- 
cratic organization of that which is actually given. The view 
which we wish to champion can be brought out most clearly 
by means of a historical approach. This will be made as 
brief as possible pursuant to our object. 

''What," asks Berkeley, "do we perceive besides our own 
ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that 
any of these, or any combination of them, should exist 

79 



8o CRITICAL REALISM 

unperceived?" {Principles of Human Knowledge, sec. 4.) For 
him, perception is an operation which involves an active 
being variously called mind, spirit, soul, and self. When 
we examine these terms more closely, we are struck by the 
vagueness with which they are used. Berkeley does not 
distinguish clearly enough between what is immediately 
experienced and what is inferred, between fact and theory. 
As a result of centuries of reflection, the modern scientist 
has become convinced that a sharp separation of fact and 
theory is a prerequisite of advance. Otherwise theory usurps 
the place of fact, and prejudices dictate a closed dogmatic 
system. The philosopher must harken to this conclusion of 
science and seek patiently for the facts before he erects his 
theory. Let us note in what way Berkeley falls short of this 
method. To be just to him we must, of course, remember 
the time in which he wrote. 

Sometimes a semi-empirical view-point dominates in Berke- 
ley, and the self is spoken of as an active agent of which the 
individual has an intuition or notion. Yet he does not say 
whether we always have an intuition of the self while we are 
perceiving. At other times, his outlook is metaphysical, — in 
the precritical sense of that term, — and the mind is held to be 
an active spiritual substance in which ideas exist. In this 
connection, we -catch glimpses of Platonic and scholastic 
psychology. Were we asked to give a cross-section of the 
field of the individual's experience according to Berkeley's 
system, we should find difficulty in deciding what to include. 
He does not seem to assert that the notion of the spirit always 
accompanies the operation of perceiving and the spirit itself is 
essentially an entity which God acts upon to produce ''ideas.'' 
On the other hand, in the Principles at least, he maintains 
that the notion of the mental operation is always present and 
cannot be abstracted from. ''To have an idea," he asserts, 
"is all one as to perceive." We shall see later that he is not 
quite certain what he means by this statement. Is he 
referring to an experienced connection or to an explanatory 
relation? Again, there is a realistic note in his treatment of 
the self and its activities. The notion of the operation of 
the mind is evidently not identical with the operation itself. 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 8i 

To be is not, in this case or in the case of the self, to have a 
notion of. He takes a realistic attitude toward the self and 
its activities quite different from the idealistic attitude he 
takes toward the ideas. We have examined Berkeley in 
this detail in order to bring out certain ambiguities in his 
teaching. 

The extrusion of a dominant, substantive self or spirit 
and its operations from the field of the individual's experience 
prepares the way for an empirical analysis of that field as 
free as possible from presuppositions. We are not begging 
the question of whether there is a relatively permanent self 
which acts and which we can knoWj but are only desirous of 
starting with what is actually experienced. The first ques- 
tion which logically presents itself concerns the empirical 
unity of the field. That the field of the individual's experience 
has a unity, nearly everyone admits; there is, however, no 
general agreement as to what this unity is due or as to its 
extent and nature. To explain the unity of experience was 
part of Kant's task; but it cannot be said that he accomplished 
it. The Transcendental Ego to which he makes appeal is 
an element without experience; hence, the unity is a gift 
from outside. Many present-day writers hold that the unity 
of the field is due to synthetic processes within its own borders. 
Such continuities and relations as are experienced are not 
contributed by a self which exists independently, but arise 
naturally within what is a continuum from the first. The 
chaos of sense-material with which Kant started is looked 
upon by these thinkers as mythological. But, if this be the 
case, the relations which the understanding, as a separate 
faculty, is supposed to contribute are empirical. The result 
is that the individual's experience is regarded as self -evolving 
and as requiring no contributions from outside. This does 
not mean that experiencing is self-sustaining but that it is 
more like an organism than like a tapestry manufactured by 
activities alien to its content. In other words, the processes 
which lead to the more complex forms of unity are immanent, 
and their essential features can be traced. The tendency 
toward unity in judgment and in reasoning is on a level 
which makes it open to observation. When we examine 



82 CRITICAL REALISM 

these closely we find that, instead of dictation by a self, the 
characteristic of these processes is determination by the objects. 
The truth is that Kant started with a dualism between sense 
and reason and was never able to see the growth of experience 
as it actually is. His theory got between him and the facts. 
The only way to do is to make a clean slate of his distinctions 
and to trace the growth of experience from stage to stage in 
order to discover what processes arise and to decide whether 
they require the assumption of a synthetic ego. 

There are two directions or dimensions in experience 
which demand examination. The one may be called the co- 
existential, the other the temporal. The coexistential dimen- 
sion concerns the structure of the field at any one time and 
the character of the relations which connect those elements 
which are somehow present together. When we scrutinize 
the coexistential dimension^ of an individual's experience, 
we have to do with a cross-section. Its stability may be of a 
dynamic sort, like that of a wave whose material is constantly 
changing. Hence, the information we gain from the co- 
existential front offered by the individuars experience must 
be supplemented by a study of the temporal dimension. 
Elements and structures which present themselves as primi- 
tive or ultimate in the coexistential field may, when so studied, 
be revealed as products. 

In the preceding chapters we have had frequent occasion 
to emphasize the close connection which reflection indicates 
between purpose and the object perceived. This dependence 
is not perceptually apparent and, therefore, escapes the 
practical man. A definite end to be achieved dominates his 
outlook and crowds aside any latent tendency to observe 
concomitant variations within the field of consciousness. Not 
the selecting nor the factors which do the selecting, but the 
result, occupies the focus of attention. We are naturally 
outward-looking and this means result-seeking. The factors 
which control the perceptual field consist of ideas and of 
interests which function more or less unconsciously. We do 
not always know why certain features of the landscape 

1 Temporalists, such as Bergson, have done fair justice to the temporal dimension of expe- 
rience, while the "New Realists" have emphasized the coexistential dimension. What neither 
group has adequately realized is that these two dimensions must be taken together. 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S EXPERIENCE 83 

attracted our attention while others remained practically 
unnoticed. We seem to move within a world of objects some 
of which capture our regard while others do not and, 
consequently, remain in the background like obscure persons 
in an audience-room. But to describe the apparent exter- 
nality and givenness of the individual's thing-experiences is 
to repeat what Natural Realism claims to be ultimate fact. 
It is ultimate fact as a description of the position and status 
of objects in the coexist ential field. This status involves 
the presence of meanings and of a structure comparable to 
that w^hich velocity of rotation gives to a vortex. The Kantian 
seeks to derive these meanings and this structure from the 
self. But the derivation is as verbal as that of consciousness 
from the soul. When experiencing is connected with an 
organism seeking to adapt itself to its environment, a more 
plausible basis for these meanings and distinctions presents 
itself. Of this we shall have more to say later. 

It has been a mistake of the convinced idealist to read into 
the coexistential field relations and dependencies which are 
the conclusions of reflective analysis. To discover that 
objects are thing-experiences, or percepts, and therefore 
within the unity of the individual's field of experience, and to 
assert, upon this discovery as a foundation, that a unique 
relation between the self and these objects is actually expe- 
rienced, is an example of what I mean. Such an a priori 
account of the field is to be sharply distinguished from the 
result of an empirical examination. No object, it is said, can 
be experienced without a subject, and no subject without an 
object. It is further maintained that a unique relation 
connects subject and object. As a matter of fact, the indi- 
vidual's field of experience, under ordinary conditions at least, 
approaches the form of a ''frequency-surface" in statistics. 
Cne part dominates the rest for the time being and the 
other elements slope off in a spatial or semi-spatial coexistence. 
When the field is predominantly perceptual in character, the 
object attended to is seen in its spatial relations to the sur- 
rounding objects and to the percipient's body, while other 
non-physical elements cluster vaguely around as somehow 
*' together" with the body; yet, the whole field is experienced 




84 CRITICAL REALISM 

as present together, and space seems to offer no barrier to this 
simultaneity. The attention can hold in unity thing and 
idea, or thing and thing indifferently. The basic form of unity 
of coexistence in the field is togetherness. Within this com- 
prehensive, or elementary, continuity more specialized relations 
develop. Certain of these we must study with care after we 
have considered the teaching of the temporal dimension. 

The coexistential dimension of experience must be con- 
fronted with the teaching of the temporal dimension. A 
critical examination which deals with process rather than 
with mere result has forced thinkers to qualify the foregoing 
description of the empirical unity of the field of experience. 
More disinterested inspection in which comparison between 
different moments of time is employed, has brought out the 
fact that the relations between elements in experience are 
not so external as they appear to the individual. He pays 
attention only to the finished result. Correlations and 
concomitant variations in consciousness escape attention just 
as easily as they do in what science calls the physical world. 
Psychology traces the process, while common sense looks to 
the result. Now psychology has formulated and proved to 
its satisfaction certain of these genetic or internal relations. 
The law of relativity as applied within the field of consciousness 
is a good example of what I have in mind. * ' From the moment 
of its first coming into being, the existence and properties of a 
sensation are determined by its relation to other sensations." 
(Hoffding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 114.) What I have 
called perceptual perspective is another instance. It is 
wrong to appeal from these inductions to the formal externality 
and togetherness of things in the plain man's field of experience. 
What is needed is an outlook which comprehends both dimen- 
sions, process as well as result. 

It is not our purpose to ask at this point whether psychol- 
ogy is realistic like the other sciences and assumes that factors 
are at work which are not revealed on the surface. This much, 
however, is certain, that reflection and analysis are necessary 
to the discovery and formulation of the synthetic te;i4encies 
and processes which underlie the coexistential field. We have 
hinted that correlations of variables can be found within this 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 85 

concrete togetherness. Psychology, for example, stresses ever 
more strongly the selective nature of what it calls attention. 
When this term is used empirically and not facultatively, it 
stands for variations in the clearness of objects and even for 
their presence or absence in accordance with changes in 
interests. 

In attention we have to do with a selective and inhibitive 
process in which things are held in systematic relation under 
the dominance of a purpose or plan. The internal relations 
of such a system reveal themselves both in the clearness of the 
parts and in the aspects distinguished. It is only as the 
progressive movement of a system which contains and generates 
its own control that attention can be understood. At least, 
this is true of voluntary and non-voluntary attention. In 
involuntary attention, there is felt to be determination by a 
part of the field in spite of the fact that the flow of the 
field has had another direction. In voluntary attention, the 
individual experiences a control according to the ends which 
he sets for himself. There is thus a feeling of spontaneity 
which is connected with the self. Working along this temporal 
line, the psychologist has become convinced that the whole 
past experience of the individual somehow conditions the 
coexistential dimension of the field of any moment. Does 
not this conclusion suggest that the externalities which impose 
upon common sense are results and are illusory when taken as 
Natural Realism understands them ? The field of the individ- 
ual's experience is a palpitating unity of which the only overt 
and constantly present sign is that which I have designated 
the togetherness of the elements. This result is important not 
only for its own sake but also from the fact that it corrobo- 
rates the Advance of the Personal and thus strengthens the 
empirical basis of mental pluralism. 

Let us compare the position at which we have arrived 
with the view of the unity of experience championed by 
psychologists. The dualism of their terminology must be 
interpreted and discounted, but, with the analysis of science 
and the compromise entertained in regard to perception fresh 
in mind, this interpretation need offer no insuperable difficulty. 
James points out that the actual object of thought is very 



86 CRITICAL REALISM 

complex and yet a unity. ' ' But the Object of your thought is 
really its entire content or deliverance, neither more nor less. 
It is a vicious use of speech to take out a substantive kernel j 
from its content and call that its object ; and it is an equally 
vicious use of speech to add a substantive kernel not articu- 
lately included in its content, and to call that its object." 
{Principles of Psychology , Vol . I . , p . 275.) Common sense always 
tends to harden and to simplify the field of experience. Other 
thinkers have noted and stressed the organization of the field. 
James Ward, for instance, asserts that all concrete experience 
manifests a centrality and an organization. To account for 
this synthetic unity, he calls attention to the part played by 
practical interests; the individual's consciousness is conative 
as well as cognitive. Many other references to the advocacy 
of similar doctrines could be given, but these are, I think, 
sufficient. They must not be understood by the reader as 
appeals to authority; they are only statements of opinion 
which are worthy of consideration. 

The formal, or elementary, unity of togetherness is the pre- 
condition of the superposed unities of all grades which arise 
within the total field. These rest, as it were, on the surface 
of this elementary unity. With the consideration of these, 
we enter upon the problem of the self as the knower of the 
elements in the formal unity of experience. But we must 
first examine the distinctions which are characteristic of the 
coexistential field. 

Within the field of his experience, the individual con- 
trasts two types of existence. These may be called the sphere 
of objects known and the psychical, or mental, sphere respec- 
tively. Because the plain man is dominated by practical 
interests, the sphere of objects known consists for him chiefiy 
of physical things. However, he is realistic and looks upon 
these physical things as independent of the event or act of 
perception. We have seen that he is mistaken in this view 
when it is taken literally, and we are therefore compelled to 
regard this contrast as an empirical one, which, for discoverable 
reasons, has developed within the field of experience. The 
scientist carries the analysis and organization of the sphere of 
objects known to its maximum; but each scientist as he does 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S EXPERIENCE 87 

this remains within the personal. The attitude taken toward 
this sphere of objects known is that of cognition or acknowl- 
edgment; it is considered independent of the mind of the 
individual knower. When the attitude of cognition is taken 
toward a part of the field, that part is supposed by the 
individual to be removed from subjective influences and is 
so qualified. In the preceding chapters, we have already noted 
certain difficulties which arise. 

What is the ''mind'' as contrasted with the sphere of 
objects known? And what are subjective influences? We 
are convinced that this contrast is one within the field of the 
individual's experience. Psychology, logic, and philosophy 
have spent much time in the attempt to get a clear idea of 
mind ; yet the term remains vague. Let us see if we can master 
the confusion of standpoints and draw definite conclusions 
from the analyses made by these disciplines. 

For the plain man, ''mind" is a term for the inner sphere, 
and the contents of the inner sphere are rather heterogeneous. 
There are ideas and feelings and processes and acts , and these 
run parallel with the w^orld of things known. The psychologist 
starts with the mind as thus conceived and is soon led to extend 
it to percepts and concepts. Immediately, it runs foul of 
the problem of knowledge. The result is a compromise 
{cf. Chap. II). Psychology at its best divides the mind into 
processes, attitudes, objects, and content. An example of a 
mental process is reasoning, of an attitude is belief, of an 
object is an idea, of content is sensation. By means of intro- 
spection, aided by retrospection or a quick reviewing memory, 
such processes, attitudes, objects, and content can be analyzed. 
It is not our purpose to study the methods adopted by psy- 
chology to achieve its ends, but to use the results so far as they 
appeal to us as sound. 

Now, psychology analyzes that which occurs in the mind 
during the event of perceiving or of thinking about an ob- 
ject. The scientist, or the epistemologist even, may be inclined 
to hold that there is a unique mental act to be called cognition 
which terminates on the object known. This is the case 
because his interest lies in the object, and the mental side 
escapes attention. The psychologist introspects and discovers 



88 CRITICAL REALISM 

that the act is more a process staged within the structure of 
an attitude than an actus pur us of an entity called the mind. 
The coexistential dimension is blurred, as it were, at the 
mental pole. It is ordinarily dominated by meanings of a 
realistic character, and these assist in throwing the inner 
sphere into the background. When the method of intro- 
spection is employed to correct this tendency, the scope of 
attention must be enlarged beyond its customary limits; 
and training is required to make this possible. 

We are now in a position to answer the questions we asked 
a while ago. ''Mind'' and ''mental" have a broader and a 
narrower meaning. The mental is that which is opposed to 
the object known and is usually thought of as an act of the 
self. Presentative realists who look upon the object known 
as independent of the mind take the mind and the mental 
in this narrower sense. Because the object is one, they 
tend to regard the mental as an act of intuition simple in its 
nature somehow terminating on or apprehending the object. 
There are really two reasons for this conclusion. First, the 
simplicity of the function is reflected into the act which is 
supposed to perform it; and, secondly, the lack of introspec- 
tive content permits reflection to be guided by a word. We 
apprehend an object; must not the act be one just as the 
term is ? Presentative realism represents the testimony of the 
coexistential field as this is narrowed to a brief time-interval. 
It corresponds to a snap-shot in which the sphere of objects 
known is emphasized. When the temporal dimension is 
introduced more fully, the mental act is seen to be a process 
involving an attitude toward an object which secures defini- 
tion at the same time. We rest satisfied with the process 
when this definition is attained, and it is at this stage that 
presentative realisms always take a cross-section of the field. 
We shall take up this problem of the character of appre- 
hension from another standpoint in the next chapter. 

But the object known, desired, or chosen exists in the 
field of the individuars experience if our previous arguments 
are valid. Hence, these also can be regarded as mental in a 
broader use of that term. When the mental is enlarged to 
include objects as well as the psychical processes or acts which 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S EXPERIENCE 89 

are inseparable from them, we see the logical result of the 

Advance of the Personal. Objects are products of mental 
processes toward which certain attitudes are taken. We 
have no hesitation in extending the term "mental" to the 
whole field. The psychologist, also, is inclined to do this, 
but respect for the postulates and achievements of the other 
special sciences holds him back. We may conclude, then, 
that the objects which are contrasted with the subjective, or 
mental, processes which terminate on them are constructs 
and exist in the field of the individual's experience only, 
although the individual regards them as independent. Inde- 
pendence of psychical processes is interpreted as independence 
of mind; but these objects are still mental in the broader 
sense of the term. 

It is evident that the term ''mental process'' is used in 
two different senses just as the term ''mental" is. A thing- 
experience, for instance, is the product of processes such as 
association, since past experience adds itself to the sensational 
nucleus due to the stimulation of the sense-organs. A con- 
cept is likewise a product; it involves the organization of a 
wide range of experience. But these mental processes are 
not experienced by the individual as processes. It is the 
product alone that presents itself to view. Now, this product 
offers itself as an object of those subjective processes, such as 
thinking and choosing, which are directly experienced as 
along with it in the field. Both are mental, but they are 
different species of the mental. It is because of this differ- 
ence in character that the object is taken by common sense 
to be non-mental. 

We are at last able to decide the nattire and the extent of 
the unity of the field of experience. Our study of the temporal 
dimension convinced us that active processes condition the 
whole field. Whatever presents itself in the coexist ential 
dimension is a product, even though it masquerades as an 
independent object. Some of these active processes are 
immediately experienced, while others are so simple and 
habitual that they occur below the threshold of observation 
and can be known about only indirectly.^ Perceptual objects 

1 We may call these processes reflective and subreflective respectively. 



go CRITICAL REALISM 

are products of processes of this latter character. Processes 
of a character open to inspection thus develop within a total 
field which is already organized. The consequence is a 
contrast which is instinctively taken as absolute. These 
conscious processes work within a field whose elements are 
relatively external one to another. Now, togetherness is the 
dominant note of this lower level, yet I doubt whether the 
total field ever sinks to the level of mere felt coexistence. In 
adult life, at least, plans, purposes, and problems dominate the 
field and determine more internal relations; yet these more 
internal relations consequent upon conscious processes are 
experienced as arising naturally from the field. The ideal 
of thought is to let the material speak for itself, and it is sur- 
prising to what an extent this actually occurs. By means of 
such synthetic processes as judgment and inference, the 
various parts of the field secure more intimate commerce 
with one another than perception alone makes possible. 
Thus higher unities are built up on the lower unity of to- 
getherness as a basis. 

It must be kept in mind that there are different levels in 
the field of experience and that these act as controls of one 
another. The synthesis which results in thing-experiences is 
unconscious for the individual, and any further addition is 
guided more by trial and error than by reflective thought. 
The more conscious processes of the higher levels, such as 
reasoning, work within this situation and hold themselves 
responsible to the distinctions found there. The emphasis 
laid by science upon observation illustrates this fact. The 
current view that the laws of thought are also laws of things 
also exemplifies the point we are seeking to make. 

When we come to examine those conscious processes which 
are called mental or psychical, we find that they fall roughly 
into two classes. Certain mental procesess, such as reasoning, 
are more distinctly temporal. They concern themselves with 
the interpretation and reconstruction of the objects in the 
field and are, as it were, immersed in the sphere of objects 
known. Other mental processes belong more definitely to 
the coexistential field. These processes are called subjective 
and involve an attitude toward objects supposedly given. 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 91 

I wish an object or think about it or beHeve in its existence. 
These processes, because they are shorter in duration and are 
outward-looking in direction are more apt to be considered 
acts. 

Let us compare the results of our analysis with the position 
championed by Hume. We shall, with Hume, take physical 
objects as typical of the sphere of objects known. The plain 
man, as Hume points out, regards physical things as independ- 
ent of one another. ''But this table, which is present to me, 
and that chimney, may and do exist separately. This is 
the doctrine of the vulgar and implies no contradiction.'' In 
other words, spatial relations are considered external. We 
must remember that the scientist would qualify this externality 
by the assertion of the presence of gravitational and other 
connective energies. What Hume had in mind can be best 
understood by an examination of the section he devotes to 
relations. The philosopher calls distance a relation; the 
plain man identifies it with lack of relation. Now, argues 
Hume, the philosophers have shown that this table and that 
chimney are only particular perceptions. Therefore, we can 
extend the doctrine of^separate existence to all perceptions. 
(C/. Treatise, Appendix.) 

Hume's mistake consists in the confusion of the character- 
istics of the sphere of objects known with the characteristics 
of the total field within which those objects exist. He wishes 
to reduce the total field to the domain of objects and thus to 
universalize the features of this domain. The truth is that 
Hume attacks the position that objects inhere in a subject 
or substance, and he falls into the other extreme of denying 
the unity of the field of experience. C'ln general, the follow- 
ing reasoning seems satisfactory. All ideas are borrowed 
from preceding perceptions. Our ideas of objects, therefore, 
are derived from that source. Consequently no proposition 
can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which 
is not so with regard to perceptions. But 'tis intelligible and 
consistent to say that objects exist distinct and independent 
without any common, simple substance or subject of inhesion. 
This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard 
to perceptions," Treatise.) We, also, hold that there 



92 CRITICAL REALISM 

is no subject-object of inhesion, but that objects coexivSt 
with psychical processes in a field which is sustained by tern- \ 
poral processes of a fundamental character. It is a mistake, I 
moreover, to extend the attributes of the object to the total j 
field of which they are only a part. This is what Hume 
does, although he rightly regards these objects as mental. 
The total field of the individuars experience is the complex 
unity of which we must catch a clear vivsion. The principles 
which describe the growth and interdependency of the ele- 
ments of this concrete unity are developed by logic and 
psychology. The laws which concern any particular system 
of ''objects known'' which is built up within the field are 
treated by a special science. The systems of objects thus 
found in the coexistential field as contrasted with the attitude 
taken by the individual toward them, have their own mean- 
ings and characteristic relations, which are quite different 
from those that hold for the whole field. Not to recognize 
this fact was Hume's error. A system of mathematical 
knowledge is one thing; a system of chemical knowledge is 
another. In the former we have relations, in and between 
our objects of a spatial kind; in the latter the relations 
observed are spatial and causal. But these objects and this 
knowledge exist in a unity which contains them and the 
personal attitude which is set over against them. 

We are now in a position to examine the role played by 
the self in the field of experience. When we examined the 
temporal dimension of experience, we became convinced that 
the elementary unity of the field was the result of processes 
of association intimately linked with purposes. The unit 
seems to be the sensori-motor arc, and this is widened as 
reactions become less immediate and interpretation by means 
of ideas is required. The field of experience broadens as time 
goes on and assumes a definite structure in which things 
more or less familiar are set over against the self and its 
desires. The interesting fact to note is that this development 
runs parallel with the growth of the self. As the self grows, 
it becomes increasingly the centre of the field of experience. 
It selects among the objects which stand over against it and 
looks upon them in the light of ideas and of purposes. The 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 93 

more voluntary attention displaces involuntary attention, 
the more the self feels itself the master. And this feeling 
persists in non-voluntary attention when interests and habits 
of a recognized standing control the field. The consequence 
of this active centrality of the self is the ever-more-conscious 
growth of a unity of a higher level within the formal or ele- 
mentary unity of the field. This concrete unity is due to 
the crystallization of the field about the self. 

But we must study the self which comes to dominate the 
field of the individual's experience. Only when this is done, 
can we understand why the self secures its prominence. 

We must distinguish, first of all, between the self as an 
object of thought and the self as an immediate experience 
present along with, and expressing itself in, the subjective proc- 
esses. The self as an object of thought is often very com- 
plex; it is full of knowledge about the individual. I know 
myself in large part as others know me. My name, position, 
appearance, character, past history are all interwoven to 
make my self as known. I contrast this self which I and 
others call my self with other selves. It is evident that this 
self is a construction in the field of my experience when I 
think about my self. There are other objects present in the 
same field which I label other selves. As has been pointed 
out frequently of late, these selves develop together. The 
child judges the conduct and personal appearance of a play- 
mate, and this judgment reacts on its conception of itself. 
There is nothing mysterious about the self as object or as 
"me," and it evidently does not involve the existence of a 
peculiar substance. This object-self^ is permanent much as 
physical things are. We recognize our bodies and our names 
and our occupations just as we recognize familiar things. 
Sameness qualifies the self just as it qualifies ideas or mean- 
ings or things. Psychology finds that the nature of recogni- 
tion does not vary from one field to another. In truth,- it 
is very probable that the assurance of personal identity 
depends in large measure upon the sameness of the objects 
with which we deal. Were our surroundings to be changed 

1 Knowledge about the self as "me" is quite obviously achieved in the same logical way as 
knowledge about physical things. We shall find that the epistemological problem is essentially 
the same for both. 



94 CRITICAL REALISM 

from day to day so that we could not fall into easy habits of 
adaptation, we should lose much of the sense of personal 
identity. There are many popular tales which illustrate this 
problem of identity, among them the story of the caliph who 
plays a joke on a poor porter by having him transported to a 
palace, dressed in fine clothes and treated as if he were a 
lord. At once the poor man becomes bewildered and begins 
to doubt his identity. In opposition to the position that the 
identity of the self gives unity to the world, we may say that 
the unity of the world of things aids us to achieve our own 
unity and identity. It would be false, however, to go to the 
other extreme and derive the unity and identity of the self 
from the continuity and sameness of the things around the 
body. It must be remembered that, when we speak of 
things and of other selves, we refer to them as objects within 
the field of the individual's experience. This fact does not 
prevent the individual from taking, ordinarily, an entirely 
realistic attitude toward them. 

But the sense of personal identity is a function of the 
sameness of the body as well as of familiar things in general. 
And not only of the body as an ever-present thing-experience 
but also as the seat of a continuous flow of sensations and 
feelings. Psychiatry has brought to the front the importance 
of a core of persistent similarity in the organic sensations of 
the individual. When these are radically changed, the indi- 
vidual may speak of himself as dead. Even normal individuals 
may experience a sense of alienness when these vital feelings 
are temporarily modified by sickness. We say that we do 
not feel like ourselves. This means that there is a comparison 
between the present flow of sensations and that to which we 
are accustomed. The comparison may be vague and not 
consist in much more than a sense of discomfort and of strange- 
ness. But, so long as memory is unaffected and things and 
ideas are recognized, this change in the vital feelings is not 
enough to alter the personality. The importance of the bodily 
feelings lies in the fact that they qualify those subjective 
processes which are in antithesis to objects. These processes 
which are so characteristic of the duality in the coexistential 
dimension are experienced as imbedded in an end-term which 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S EXPERIENCE 95 

they express. It is the subject-self which is immediately 
experienced as that which desires or thinks or wills. Let us 
see whether it is possible to analyze this subject-self more 
fully. 

The danger which confronts reflection is to read into the 
subject-self more than is there under ordinary conditions. 
When the individual is immersed in the things around his 
body, the subject-self is not much more than the felt presence 
of the body as present with the things observed and as some- 
how the source of whatever activity is involved. It is the 
body as a centre of control and of motor dispositions. At 
such a time, subjective processes are at a minimum. For 
this level, to which we all drop now and then, the subject-self 
is a bodily self tingling with motor potentialities, i. e., with 
attitudes and recurrent tendencies to movement. Probably, 
breathing, eye-movements, kinaesthetic sensations, and a dim 
sense of purpose merge together and set themselves over against 
the things which attract our attention. All this is experienced 
as familiar; and no wonder, seeing how long we have been at 
work training, guiding, and controlling our bodies. 

At other times, the subject-self is enlarged by the presence, 
along with the bodily self, of plans and purposes and ideas. 
The individual is aware that he can direct his thoughts this 
way or that, and that he can adopt as his own certain ideals 
of conduct. The mental processes of preparation which 
occupy the mind before any overt act is performed are colored 
by the sense of spontaneity and rest upon the familiar bodily 
feelings and the ever-recurrent touches of memory. I feel 
certain that it is the recognition of meanings, of objects, 
of ideals, the sense of familiar bodily presence, the continuity 
of past and present mediated by memory, and the growing 
realization of choice that give the content of the ''I. " It is a 
mistake to seek to find a unique element which can be isolated 
from the complex process of the inner sphere of the field. 
The ''I" is the process itself as somehow having a unity in 
opposition to the rest of the field. Very often the not-self 
fades into a sort of background dimly shadowing the turbulent 
changes going on in the inner sphere. 

This subject-self, whose content may be so various, is 



96 CRITICAL REALISM 

tinged by a feeling which we all recognize. This feeling 
may be called the I-feeling. Undoubtedly, it is a product, 
but no individual while he is normal finds himself without 
it. It is impossible to describe it, since description implies 
analysis. It is analogous to the reality-feeling to which 
psychologists have called attention. This I-feeling is more 
like a sentiment or a mood than an emotion, although, when 
the individual feels himself affronted, it swells like a summer 
torrent and incorporates itself in the emotion of anger which 
ensues. Another way in which to approach the I-feeling is 
to examine the objects which call it forth. Things which we 
possess and cherish have this capacity of arousing the sense 
of self to the greatest extent. They excite a feeling of pos- 
session which varies with the value of a sentimental sort 
which we attach to the object. 

But we are not interested in the various grades of the 
sentiment of the self. The indication of the kinds of self- 
feeling which are to be found in different types of persons is 
the task of social psychology and of ethics rather than of 
epistemology. All that we need to note is that this sense of 
self may be refined and delicate or may be harsh and crude. 

When we come to examine the higher ranges of thinking 
and acting, the subject-self turns out to be a central and well- 
organized part of the field of the individual's experience 
which is haloed by the my-feeling and is the decisive standard 
for plans, judgments, and decisions of all sorts. The spon- 
taneity which we all experience at such moments seems to be 
directed by this system of ideas and values, much as an army 
is controlled by its general. Here is the centre of decision, 
the creative spring of activity, from which subjective processes 
take their rise ; and, as the tension increases when the valley 
of decision is reached, the ''I'' stands out ever more clearly 
as that which must decide. When the self is stable, it con- 
sists of ideals, of norms of duty, a knowledge of what one is 
capable of, and a decent self-respect. Thus the ''me'' is ab- 
sorbed by the subject-self to form part of the ''I," the 
difference between them being not so much that of content 
as that of function. It is this immediately experienced self 
that remembers and appropriates that which is remembered, 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 97 

that wills and contrasts itself with the not-self which it 
desires to change, that knows and distinguishes itself from 
that which is known. The ''I" is, however, not a stable 
entity. It enlarges itself at times with the full content of 
the ''me," and at other times diminishes to not much more 
than the felt bodily presence. Always it differs from the 
''me" as an object of thought by the fact that it belongs to 
the subject side of the duality and is qualified by the sense of 
control which is seldom, if ever, absent. The "I" can absorb 
the "me," but the "me" alone is too passive to constitute 
the "I." 

Probably, the best way in which to bring out the conse- 
quences of the foregoing analysis is to consider the question, Is 
the individual always self-conscious? The term "self-conscious," 
is ambiguous. It seems to me best to differentiate between 
self-consciousness and consciousness of self. Consciousness 
of self is awareness of self as an object. This self of which 
I am aware may be the empirical "me" which is supposedly 
open to the knowledge of other individuals. It is generally 
granted that my friends may know my character and capabili- 
ties and personal appearance as well as I myself do. The self 
as object is as common as any other object, and we naturally 
take the same realistic attitude toward it. It is this sort of 
self which goes by the name of the individual in history. We 
speak of the character of Cicero or of Cato and seek to set 
it in the context of the ethos of the time. We add to the 
character as thus judged the knowledge we possess of the 
life of the individual. All this is objective and belongs to 
the sphere of objects known as common. But the individual 
cherishes the conviction that the self as common object of 
knowledge should be qualified by information which he alone 
possesses. He is conscious of his motives and the exact 
circumstances which led him to act in such and such a way. 
Such information is felt to be private; other persons must 
depend on inference or on his assertions, while he remembers 
what his motives were. With remembrance, we come to the 
essentially private nature of part of the self. It will be best 
to limit ourselves to the self of introspection for the time 
being and to leave the problem of the identity of the self 



98 CRITICAL REALISM 

through change until we have reached an agreement in regard 
to self-consciousness and consciousness of self. 

The self of which we are conscious in introspection is the 
subject-self of the previous moment. We can recall our 
attitude, the dominant ideas and purposes associated with 
the sense of control, and the background of the bodily self 
in which these are incarnated. These are the objects of 
which we are conscious in a quick-reviewing memory. But 
introspection implies a control-self dominated by the purpose 
which guides memory and its association processes. Hence, 
introspective consciousness of self is always private, although 
the results may be communicated by means of language. The 
self of which the individual is conscious is now an object, 
while it purports to be the subject-self of the previous moment. 
It must be kept in mind that the self of which we are conscious 
in introspection when this is the case is only part of what is 
potentially open to introspection. The whole field of the 
individual's experience is theoretically open to introspective 
memory. This much must suffice for the self of which we are 
conscious in introspection and for the self which we know 
in common with others. 

But self-consciousness is different from consciousness of 
self. There are degrees of self -consciousness. I mean that 
the subject-self of the moment may be more or less prominent 
and more or less highly developed. In ordinary perception, 
it may not be much more than the sense of bodily pres- 
ence and the feeling of control and of a vague purpose. In 
moments of decision, the subject-self may be very com- 
plex and consist of stable elements in changing relations to 
merely suggested plans, the whole rooted in a felt process 
of determination suffused with the I-feeling. Such a subject- 
self may bulk very large in the field of experience and almost 
crowd out the other elements. We often lose sight of our 
surroundings at such moments. This is self -consciousness 
in the best sense of that term. The *'me'' flows into and 
merges with the ''V and gives it ideational content. 

A word or two must be said about self-consciousness in 
the derogatory sense of the term. A nervous youth becomes 
self-conscious when he enters a drawing-room where a number 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCE 99 

of persons are assembled. This means that he becomes aware 
of his clothing and of the carriage of his body and thinks of 
what opinions those who are present may form of him. Such 
a self-consciousness is a sort of social consciousness in which 
the ''me" is felt to be under fire. The characteristic feature 
of this condition is the obstruction of clear thinking and 
acting which it brings in its wake. The result is a chaotic 
state of ideas and feelings in which the sense of self throbs 
like a recurrent pain. 

We have lingered over the self, partly because the topic 
is so fundamental and partly because the term is used in so 
many different ways. Thus far the self has turned out to 
be quite empirical. We have seen no reason to postulate a 
spiritual substance or to call in a Transcendental Ego. The 
unity and. identity of the subject-self are based on the I-feeling 
and on the familiarity of the body, the organic sensations, and 
the ideas and ideals which are associated with it. In large 
measure, also, it rests on the recognition of the things to which 
it is opposed, as objects to be dealt with in various ways. 
The higher the level of self-consciousness, the more the same- 
ness of the ideational content absorbed into the ''I " by means 
of the ''me " gives identity to the self. The unity, on the other 
hand, is essentially functional in character, and reflects the 
organization of habits and motor dispositions and the harmony 
of tendencies of all sorts which is the product of past activities 
and decisions. Thus the unity of the subject-self is a creation 
of the individual based on those instinctive unities which 
he receives as an inheritance. Like character, it is a 
growth. The "me" which enters into the "I" is obviously 
empirical. Its unity and identity do not differ in the least in 
their basis and nature from that of our ideas of other selves. 
These are objects which are notoriously constructs.^ They are, 
in large measure, social in their genesis and implications, yet 
the "me" always has a context of elements in its constitution 
which are qualified as private. We may say, then, that the 
self grows up with its objects in the temporal dimension of 
the field of the individuars experience. 

1 While we have knowledge about other selves, this knowledge involves no literal participation 
in their experiences. On this point, also, I am opposed to the "New Realism." 



loo CRITICAL REALISM 

The identity of the self through time has caused unneces- 
sary difficulty to many thinkers. When I think of myself 
as an object, one of the chief characteristics of that object is 
its persistence. I know that I am some thirty-odd years old 
and that I have passed through a certain physical and intel- 
lectual development. But I know that other individuals havel 
similarly lived and developed. Indeed, this characteristic is 
not confined to persons, for trees have their history as well. 
There is not the least doubt that we can think of objects in this 
fashion as existing through time. Let us take an inanimate!! 
object such as a building and ask ourselves what we mean by 
identity through time and how we are able to think it. The 
question is purely empirical in its nature and must not be 
thought to beg any metaphysical difficulty as to the thinkable- 
ness of change. It seems to me that we remember the 
object which we now recognize as having been in some place 
at a time in the past. The nature of the object which thus 
persists is supposed to be given in perception. There 
are two motives at work to determine our ability to 
think of persistence through time. The first and more 
obvious one is recognition. The object is suffused with a 
sense of sameness. But man has a dated memory and a 
conception of time intervals. Hence, recognition is inter- 
preted by means of the meaning of persistence, so that it 
becomes merely the testimony for this persistence. We 
pointed out in our analysis of Natural Realism that objects 
are experienced as permanent from the first and not as tran- 
sient. But why are they experienced as permanent? For the 
simple reason that, given the conditions of perception, tran- 
siency is a harder meaning to develop than permanence. 
Perception is closely connected through organic reactions to 
things, and these things perceived are experienced as those 
to which we react. They are, therefore, as real as we are. 
What is more natural than that our sense of sameness 
through change should also qualify them, especially since 
this attitude is supported by recognition? 

The question now is. What is this sense of sameness which 
suffuses the individual based on? We have already answered 
it in large measure. I wish, however, to call attention to the 






THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAL'S EXPERIENCE loi 

fact that a sense of difference would be harder to account for 
than a sense of sameness. It is too often assumed that dis- 
continuity is more natural than continuity. That may be 
the case for reality, but it certainly is not so for experiencing. 
Difference is secondary to resemblance, and resemblance only 
slowly separates itself from felt sameness. Hence, the felt 
sameness of the self from moment to moment is based on con- 
tinuity, and this continuity in turn on the resemblance of the 
elements on the subject side as well as the object side. Experi- 
enced sameness is one thing, changelessness is another. Be- 
cause I feel myself to be the same as I was a moment ago, it 
does not follow that a changeless something persists through 
that time. 

But the identity of the self is not merely felt from moment 
to moment; it is also thought over wide lapses of time by 
means of memory. I remember certain experiences I had in 
Milan a few years ago'. This means that I now remember 
experiences that I, the "I" of a few years ago, had. In what 
sense, are these the same ''I''? It must be noted that I 
remember the ''I'' as well as the experiences which I had. 
The relation between this past ''I" and the experiences is 
similar to that which exists between the present ''I" and its 
experiences. The " I " and the experiences are objects thought 
of as in this relation. The question thus comes to be. Why do 
we identify this ' ' I " we remember with the present self ? So 
far as I can see it is because the two selves have a similar 
content and can be connected by the remembrance of a chain 
of selves leading up to the present, and because the ''I" is 
related to experiences which are themselves remembered. 
The process or fact of remembering is qualified as holding only 
for the experiences of the individual who remembers. It is 
in this regard that memory differs from knowledge as such 
and is only a species of knowledge. Now, so far as I can see, 
there is no need for any bond between my past experiences 
and my past subject-self and the present field of my experience. 
Memory is a present construction which claims to give us 
knowledge of what was but is no longer. Why we are able 
to have memory is, however, a problem which the field of 
experience as such does not seem to me capable of answering. 

8 



I02 CRITICAL REALISM 

Any inexplicability concerns the basis of experiencing and not 
the empirical self. 

Once we have freed ourselves from a false view of the 
identity of the self through time, we can indicate the demands 
which the true outlook brings in its wake. John Stuart Mill 
speaks of the ''inexplicable tie which connects the present 
consciousness with the past one of which it reminds me/' and 
asserts that this is ''as near as I think we can get to a positive 
conception of the Self." "We are forced," he says, "to appre- 
hend every part of the series as linked with the other parts 
by something in common, which is not the feelings themselves, 
any more than the succession of the feelings is the feelings 
themselves . . . " He is thus led to speak of a common and 
permanent element. {Examination of Sir William Hamilton's 
Philosophy, p. 263, fifth edition.) Such a position is perilously 
near that held by Thomas Hill Green. Let me state my objec- 
tion to this argument of Mill as briefly as possible. I see no 
reason to believe that my present consciousness is connected 
with the past one of which it reminds me. Memory is not a 
revival of the past, but a knowledge about the past by means 
of the present. Therefore, there is no series of feelings which 
literally belong to different periods to be related by a self. The 
memory-process is empirical and above-board; like thought, 
it involves association and a production which comes to us as 
recognized. The only difference is that in memory the 
content recognized is dated and connected with the indi- 
vidual as he was in the past. All this is empirical fact; it is 
complex, no doubt, but in no sense inexplicable. However, 
it does leave a problem which empirical idealism such as 
Mill's cannot answer. The present does imply the conserva- 
tion, in some form, of the past. Memory must have a basis. 
But such a basis cannot be found in either the subject-self or 
the object-self. When these are actual, they are elements 
in the field of the individual's experience and are temporal. 
We have here, in short, a challenge to the sufficiency of mental 
pluralism. The individual may be more than his changing 
field of experience. 

Our work thus far has been, in the main, that of description 
and analysis. We have become convinced that the field of 



THE FIELD OF THE INDIVIDUAUS EXPERIENCE 103 

the individual's experience is a unity of a concrete sort and 
that the coexistential dimension of this unity must be kept in 
touch with the temporal dimension. Psychology has devoted 
much of its energy to the temporal, or process, side of the field 
and has succeeded in proving that the unity is much more 
intimate than appears on the surface. The analysis of the 
coexistential dimension was especially interesting, because it 
led to a clearer understanding of the distinction between the 
sphere of objects known and the subject, or knower. The 
subjective, or psychical, processes which are apt to be thought 
of as acts of a relatively permanent self were seen to merge in 
the subject-self as a centre of control or spontaneity. For 
this reason, they are naturally experienced as mental in 
contrast with the objects upon which they terminate. We 
pointed out, however, that the whole field is mental and 
that the contrast between ''mental" processes and acts and 
their objects lies within the mental in this broader sense. 

In the next chapter, we shall apply the results of this 
better understanding of the field of experience to particular 
problems. 



CHAPTER V 

DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 

IN ORDER that we may make assured progress in theory 
of knowledge, it is imperative that we become well 
acquainted with the distinctions characteristic of the field 
of the individuars experience. A slight misstep in this 
intricate domain may have disastrous consequences, much 
as a slight miscalculation in astronomy may lead the investi- 
gator far astray. We shall see that idealist and realist read 
the fundamental terms and contrasts of experience differently ; 
yet, until there is a fair consensus of opinions on these points, 
more ultimate constructions must be shadowed in doubt. It 
will be our endeavor to examine the different interpretations 
of these basic distinctions with a view to a non-partisan 
determination of the facts. 

I shall select as the problem which will best introduce us 
to our task the following : Do we, as a matter of fact, experience 
an act of perceiving when we have percepts or thing-expe- 
riences? Perception is typical of those events which idealists 
and immediate realists unite in calling knowledge. Later 
we shall see that there is another kind of knowledge besides this 
presentational sort; but for the present we shall confine 
ourselves to the problems which have arisen around it. Some 
thinkers maintain that it is possible to go to a lower level than 
perception and find the same contrast between the mental 
act and the object of the act. Mr. S. Alexander, for instance, 
speaks in the following assured manner: ''Or go down lower 
than perception to sensation. In sensation we distinguish 
the sensing which is an act of consciousness from the sensum 
which is non-mental. The act of consciousness has no property 
of green, or sweet, or musical, or any other character which 
can strictly be said to be one of quality." (Aristotelian Society, | 
Proceedings, 1910-11, p. 8.) The point is not important for '" 
me; and, as I wish to avoid dogmatism, I shall simply give 
the position to which I incline. I believe that the individual 



104 



i 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 105 

perceives sensa. This means that sensa, or sense-quaHties, 
are abstracted elements within the perceptual field. If 
anything, attention is more strained in the experience of 
sensa than in the perception of familiar things. Purpose 
and analytic attention are apparently the preconditions of 
such sensa. Fact and theory have been sadly mingled on this 
subject. Those who feel compelled to universalize the 
distinction between the act of awareness and the object of 
this act, naturally assume its presence from the beginning. 
Those who believe that this contrast develops within the field 
of the individual's experience for empirical reasons but is not 
primitive do not extend it farther down than introspection 
warrants. But introspection is easily warped by pre- 
conceptions, as the psychologist is the first to warn us. A 
compromise, therefore, seems best. Since those who hold 
that there is a mental act in sensation to be distinguished from 
its object, the sensum, maintain that this contrast exists also 
at higher levels, it will be advisable to begin analysis with 
these. We can then have common ground. What we desire 
is, first, an unbiased account of the coexistential field of the 
individuars experience when he has percepts, and, second, an 
explanation of this account. I fear that both idealists and 
realists have sought to advance a theory before they summed 
up the facts. 

Under ordinary conditions, objects are continually arising 
in, and leaving, the field of observation. Suppose we take the 
instance of a traveler who is looking out upon an interesting 
landscape through the window of a fast-moving train. Rivers, 
forests, mountains, and cottages succeed one another in a 
continuous panorama. These things are new to him and 
engross his attention. Consequently, he is outward-looking 
and fairly lives among them. Probably he is barely conscious 
that he is sitting in the car and looking out upon the landscape. 
Let us now ask whether such a traveler is aware of an act of 
perceiving. If he were a psychologist, what would be revealed 
to his introspection? We must remember that introspection 
is apt to change the field and to render the individual more self- 
conscious. It will be best, therefore, to trust to what the psychol- 
ogist really means by introspection, viz., quick retrospection. 



io6 CRITICAL REALISM 

It seems to me that the individual will discover that the 
things dominated his field and that the remainder consisted 
of a vague background of bodily attitude and feelings — the 
subject-self at its lowest. This analysis would seem to exclude l 
the successive mental acts of perception of which the immedi- 
ate realist speaks. 

As Hume pointed out, percept and thing coincide for 
common sense. This thing is contrasted with those feelings 
and ideas which the individual considers peculiarly his own. , 
Along with the entrance of things into the field goes the' 
realization that the individual plays a part in conditioning 
this entrance. We are not always so passive as in the instance 
referred to above. It is likely that eye-movements and 
head-movements and relative change of position qualify the 
sense of attention and enter as constituents in what is called 
the *' perception of things.'' The greater this sense of personal 
activity and the more definite the feeling of the importance, 
for the presence of things in the field, of the part played by 
the individual, the more such terms as ''apprehension,'' ''con- 
sciousness of," "awareness," and "perceiving", as referring to 
acts of the individual bearing upon the presence of objects, 
come into use. What we have here is a development which 
runs parallel with the growth of the meanings which char- 
acterize Natural Realism. We as individuals apprehend 
that which is common and independent. We shall see later 
that other motives enter to make the presence of things stand 
out as a condition to be contrasted with their absence. This 
condition of presence is naturally connected with the individual 
and quietly emphasizes those activities already noted and 
qualifies them. 

We may say, then, that when an individual is engrossed in 
things, they are simply present along with a minimal degree of 
self -consciousness. When an individual directs his attention 
on things, he usually senses a certain amount of activity on 
his own part, and this lends itself to interpretation in the light 
of meanings and distinctions which have gradually grown up 
and become second nature to him. Hence, when the individual, | 
becomes reflective and describes his experience, he does so by 
stating that he perceived or apprehended the objects in 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 107 

question. It is natural for reflection to stress the more con- 
scious experience. This conclusion of reflection is frequently 
carried on into perception, and we seek to take note of our- 
selves as perceiving things. ''When I see the sun/' writes 
Mr. Russell, ''I am often aware of my seeing the sun; thus 
*my seeing the sun' is an object with which I have immediate 
acquaintance." In other words, our attention tries to cover 
a larger domain. But what is this object called ''seeing" 
which is suif used with the feeling of self ? It is not a cognitive 
relation, but seems to stand for a sense of activity plus a belief 
in the necessity for something more. We must not be satisfied 
with a verbal description and the assurance that this object of 
acquaintance is mental ; we must press on to discover what, 
exactly, these words symbolize. I am inclined to hold that 
they stand, in large measure, for a construction which is 
added by the plain man to his actual experience and which 
finds a support in those immediately enjoyed or experienced 
processes which run parallel to things in the field of ex- 
perience. 

It is the mistake of the psychologist, on the one hand, and 
of the epistemologist, on the other, to forget that the adult 
individual moves and thinks within a highly organized level of 
experience. It is impossible to penetrate by mere introspection 
into a virgin experience uninfluenced by the outlook on the 
world and the self which has gradually been built up. Common- 
sense theory is intertwined with psychical fact. With the 
assistance of reflection, we must try to remove these theories 
one by one and clear away their additions to what is undeni- 
ably given. In this connection, it is interesting to note that, 
when circumstances lead the individual to assign the initiative 
to the object, he asserts that it presented itself to him. And 
the fact that the presence of things in the field of the indi- 
vidual's experience is actually approached from these two 
opposite directions, so that the activity is now assigned to the 
individual and now to the things, confirms me in the belief 
that we have in mental apprehension, or awareness, a theory 
more than a fact. 

Common sense accepts the dualism into which the field of 
experience divides itself on its coexistential side and does not 



io8 CRITICAL REALISM 

ask too curiously its conditions and meaning. Things are im- 
personal, common, and permanent; the person is, in a sense, 
one thing among others, yet there is for him an inner realm 
of ideas and feelings and mental processes present along with 
these things while distinguishable from them. Such mental 
processes as wishing, thinking about, choosing, and remember- 
ing involve an object v/hich they terminate upon and revolve 
about. This complex whole is suffused with feeling like an 
atmosphere in which it lives. How natural it is to carry 
this contrast between the mental process and its central object 
down to perception! We have seen in part why we tend to 
do so. In what we call perception there is the contrast between 
the impersonal and common object and the relatively active 
individual who perceives. But what is this perceiving? In 
wishing or thinking about there is a very definite immediate 
experience of a mental process which occupies time and has 
analyzable elements. We do not depend in large measure 
upon a construction. This is far less the case in what we call 
perceiving. The mental process in contrast to the object is 
reduced to certain precedent activities and to a bodily atti- 
tude surrounding the subject-self. It is for this reason that 
perceiving is called by the immediate realists a mental act 
rather than a process. 

We have to do with a sort of snap-shot of the structure of 
the coexistential dimension which does not do justice to the 
temporal dimension. Yet the psychologist will inform you 
that the percept is a construction which involves an inter- 
pretation on the part of the mind. He is concerned at this 
point with the temporal dimension and admits that this 
process of interpretation is simultaneous with the entrance of 
the percept into the field. It is only after this that the 
duality of the coexistential field is clearest. Thus we have 
two kinds of mental processes: the more primitive, which do 
not reveal themselves to the plain man very clearly, if at all; 
and the immediately experienced processes, which appear 
within the structure of the coexistential field and are con- 
sciously contrasted with the world of objects perceived and 
otherwise known. The confusion of these two kinds is 
dangerous to epistemology, especially when it is blended 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 109 

with a mystical or non-empirical view of mind. In the 
preceding chapter we tried to keep a grip on the two 
dimensions in which they chiefly function and thus to see the 
structure of the field in the light of the processes which 
sustained it. 

The realistic implication of the word ''perception'' can be 
brought out in another way. Objects are thought of as 
existing whether perceived or no. Thus perception refers 
to the openness of the domain of things to inspection. As 
the ability of the individual to attend to different portions 
of a supposedly independent world becomes associated with 
the mind as a system of processes and capacities more or less 
under the control of the self, the way is prepared for the 
development of a theory of this openness of things to observa- 
tion. Common sense, we have seen, accepts the fact. But 
reflection is not satisfled with mere acceptance. The more* 
the outer and the inner world are separated by reflection, the 
more does this openness become a problem and the more does 
stress tend to be laid upon the mind as the active source of a 
peculiar cognitive apprehension. The mind is even thought 
of as reaching out and somehow coming in contact with things 
independent of itself or, at least, of pointing toward them. 
Thus with the sharpening of the dualism characteristic of 
Natural Realism comes a theoretical interpretation of percep- 
tion. Very often this interpretation claims to be no more 
than a description of fact. This is the case with Mr. Alexander. 
*'I assume," he writes, ''and will afterwards justify the 
assumption, that the table provokes in the thing called my 
mind the action of perceiving, stirs my consciousness into 
activity, and that it does so by acting causally on my brain. 
All this is theory. Fact is that mind is active as an act of 
consciousness, and the table is present along with it." (Aris- 
totelian Society, Proceedings, 1910-11, p. 7.) He further 
states: "Realize that if of two things which are together, and 
can affect one another, one has the character of being conscious- 
ness, then you will understand that to be conscious of a 
thing is to be a consciousness and to have that consciousness 
evoked by that thing." It is evident that this outlook is 
built rather naively on what we have called Natural Realism. 



no CRITICAL REALISM 

The facts developed in the earlier chapters forced us to give 
up Natural Realism; the result was that we were led to hold 
that we perceived a percept and not a thing and that the 
contrast between consciousness and thing, upon which these 
thinkers lay so much stress, is one within the field of the 
individual's experience. 

If the foregoing analyses be well-founded, it follows that 
the mental act of perceiving, or act of consciousness, is partly 
a construction. I mean that what is present on the subject- 
side is read in the light of an interpretation suggested to the 
thinker by the structure and meanings of that level of expe- 
rience which is called Natural Realism. The realization of 
mental control combines with the activities of the body and 
the sense-organs to produce an immediate experience which 
can readily be interpreted as an act of perceiving. To this is 
added the power of words to cast their spell over the quickly 
changing consciousness of him who tries to introspect. The 
phrase '' I perceive" easily dominates the outlook of the indi- 
vidual and misleads even painstaking introspection. 

The status of immediate realism depends upon the accept- 
ance of the distinction between the act of perceiving and the 
thing perceived. A recent criticism of Berkeley is based upon 
the assertion that Berkeley confused the thing apprehended 
with the act of apprehension. ''Either of these," writes 
Mr. Russell, ''might be called an 'idea'; probably either 
would have been called an idea by Berkeley." {The Problems 
of Philosophy, p. 66.) He suggests, in other words, that 
the mental character of the act is transferred to the things 
apprehended by an "unconscious equivocation." But only 
the act is mental in Mr. Russell's eyes. "The faculty of 
being acquainted with things other than itself is the main 
characteristic of a mind." Mind is evidently limited to these 
mental acts which are related to something other than the 
mind. Thus Mr. Russell asserts that "Acquaintance with 
objects essentially consists in a relation between the mind and 
something other than the mind; it is this that constitutes the 
mind's power of knowing things." In the chapter entitled, 
"An Examination of Idealism," we shall point out the fallacy 
of this postulate. At present we are concerned more with the 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD m 

attack upon Berkeley. This attack displays such self- 
assurance that it demands investigation. Does Berkeley 
confuse these two things, the mental act and the thing 
apprehended ? 

In the Principles, Berkeley seems to have held that 
sensible things are in the mind only as they are perceived by it, 
and to have thought of perception as an operation. But in 
this book he never came to close quarters with perception as an 
operation. When he speaks of mental operations of which we 
have notions, he mentions willing, loving, remembering, which 
are, as we have pointed out, mental processes which are imme- 
diately experienced. In the Three Dialogues, however, he 
took up the problem and faced it squarely, although he did 
not realize the consequences of the conclusion to which he came. 
He attacks the suggestion that we must distinguish between 
sensation, as an act of the mind perceiving, and the object 
perceived. Now, this is precisely the contrast which imme- 
diate, or presentational, realists like Russell and Alexander have 
in mind and by means of which Russell seeks to show that 
Berkeley was the victim of a confusion. But Berkeley denies 
that the mind is active in perception. I recommend to the 
English realists a study of this part of the Dialogues (pp. 
40-4, Open Court edition). Berkeley cherishes the necessity 
of a substance; and since ideas cannot exist in an unperceiv- 
ing substance, he decides that they must exist in a perceiving 
substance which is, however, essentially passive in perception. 
What is necessary to reach Hume's position is to deny the need 
for a substance at all. Thus Berkeley's ''ideas" are Hume's 
*' impressions" and Russell's ''sense-data." Hence the prob- 
lem comes to be : Who is more nearly right, Hume or Russell? 

The problem raised by the criticism of the scholastic 
element in Berkeley is of fundamental importance for theory of 
knowledge. We shall take G. E. Moore as the typical advocate 
of the position that there is an element called consciousness 
in perception distinct from that which is perceived. We shall 
endeavor to see what he means and whether what he means is 
true. As a result, certain conclusions should stand out clearly 
to guide us in our interpretations of basic distinctions in the 
field of the individual's experience. 



112 CRITICAL REALISM 

Mr. Moore passes from perception to sensation. What, 
he asks, is a sensation? The sensation of blue differs from the 
sensation of green; yet they are both ahke in being sensations. 
They must, therefore, have a common element. This common 
element Mr. Moore calls consciousness. In every sensation 
there are, accordingly, two distinct terms: (i) consciousness 
in respect of which all sensations are alike; and (2) something 
else, in respect of which one sensation differs from another. 
'' The true analysis of a sensation or idea is as follows. The 
element which is common to them all, and which I have 
called 'consciousness' really is consciousness. A sensation is, 
in reality, a case of knowing or 'being aware of or 'experienc- 
ing' something . . . To have in your mind knowledge of 
blue is not to have in your mind a 'thing' or 'image' of 
which blue is the content." ("The Refutation of Idealism/' 
Mind, Vol. XXVIII, p. 433.) 

Let us first see what Mr. Moore deduces from this dis- 
tinction before we attack it. He maintains that idealists have 
held that the object of consciousness in a sensation is merely 
a content of the sensation. "It is held that in each case we 
can distinguish two elements and two only: (i) the fact that 
there is a feeling or experience; and (2) what is felt or expe- 
rienced; the sensation or idea, it is said, forms a whole, in 
which we must distinguish two 'inseparable aspects,' 'content' 
and ^existence.'" With Mr. Moore's extremely able criticism 
of this conception I am in full agreement. The logical con- 
clusion of the position is that the "sensation of blue'' differs 
from a blue bead or a blue beard as the latter two differ from 
each other; the former contains consciousness rather than glass 
or hair. (Ibid., p. 448.) Having reduced the content, or 
quality, view to absurdity, he returns to his own analysis that 
consciousness really is consciousness and a sensation a case of 
knowing something. Thus the sensation of blue includes 
blue, awareness, and a unique relation of this element to blue. 

Before we consider the assumptions made by Mr. Moore, 
it may be well to call attention to the answer which Berkeley 
gives to the assertion that idealism holds that blue is a quality 
of consciousness. To the fifth objection, that if extension and 
figure exist only in the mind, it follows that the mind is 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 113 

extended and figured, he replied that these '^quaHties are in 
the mind only as they are perceived by it, that is, not by way 
of mode or attribute, but only by way of idea,'' As I under- 
stand this answer, it admits that sensations are objects of 
the mind. But sensations do not, for Berkeley, contain any 
inner duplicity; they are not analyzable into consciousness 
and its object. The object is the sensation. This at least 
is the position which he takes in the Three Dialogues. Blue 
and green are sensations because they have a certain status 
as objects of the mind, not because, as Mr. Moore asserts, 
they have a common element. 

But Mr. Moore would reply that Berkeley wishes to make 
sensations objects of the mind without admitting the aware- 
ness of which they are objects. ^ We have already pointed 
' out the difficulty which confronts the analyst who wishes to 
I give a cross-section of what is actually experienced in per- 
I ception according to Berkeley (c/. Chap. IV). He asserts that 
1 the mind is passive and not active in perception. Thus 
\ there is too much talk of substance or mind and too little 
' of what is meant by perceiving. But if we eliminate soul- 
I substance, as Hume does, we are left with sensations as impres- 
\ sions or mental existences which exist although they are not 
' objects. The mind, according to Hume, consists of these and 
their reproductions. While we have criticised Hume's denial 
of the unity of the field of experience, it is quite possible that 
he is right in the position that impressions and ideas are 
independent of any special act of perceiving, although not of 
1 attention. This is, in fact, but the logical consequence of 
1 his amendment of Berkeley. 

1 It is necessary to study perception instead of sensing, 
f for the reasons given above. We saw that the subject-self 
is given with the percept, which is ordinarily regarded as a 
j thing. Whatever activities occur qualify the subject-self 
! and are readily interpreted as mental acts, since they harmon- 
ize with other meanings. Chief among these is, perhaps, 
the contrast between the thing as given and as merely con- 
ceived. Because we can think of the thing when it is not 
actually present, we are able to distinguish the givenness as 

1 Moore's "A Refutation of Idealism" seems to boil down to this point of difference. 



114 CRITICAL REALISM 

a sort of additional fact. It is this additional fact which, 
when taken in connection with the growing feeling that the 
mind must perform an act of apprehension, gives much of 
the meaning of awareness. (C/. Strong, ^^Has Mr. Moore 
Refuted Idealism?" Mind, Vol. XXX, p. i8i.) The result 
is that a growing dualism within the field of the individuars 
experience between the person experiencing and the things 
experienced is interpreted. What I wish to emphasize is that 
this development is the inevitable outcome of the meanings 
characteristic of Natural Realism. 

We may say, then, that there is a dualistic structure of 
experience in perception but that both sides are mental. The 
dualism is a developed one within the unity of the field. The 
nature and extent of this unity was sufficiently discussed in 
the preceding chapter, but certain points should be touched 
on in this connection. 

Before impressions are clearly present to the subject-self, as 
they are in perception, they must go through a process of inter- 
pretation. Past experience is brought to bear upon the present 
claimant and it is clothed with definite meaning. Psycholo- 
gists frequently speak of this process as the ascription of 
meaning to the stimulus and explain it in terms of association. 
Perception involves the complication of the sensational nucleus 
with knowledge-about. Every percept, or thing-experience, 
is a product in which centrally-aroused factors are as impor- 
tant as the sensational core. We stressed these activities 
as characteristic of the temporal dimension of the field. Only 
after this has been accomplished does the percept stand out 
clearly to the percipient. For this reason interpretation of 
the stimulus and entrance into consciousness are considered 
simultaneous. It is evident that entrance into consciousness 
involves distinct presence along with the subject-self in the 
field. This is what Reid had in mind when he condemned 
Hume's position. The first stage is not simple apprehension 
of sensations, but ''apprehension accompanied with belief and 
judgment.'' (C/. Chap. III.) Entrance into consciousness 
ordinarily implies the level of Natural Realism. 

It is a mistake, however, to think of the subject-self as 
performing an act of apprehension of a peculiar kind at the 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 115 

time of the entrance of a stimulus into consciousness. Apper- 
ception involves processes, but these are not centred in the 
subject-self as Kant supposed. Judgment, assimilation, 
ascription of meaning, and interpretation are temporal 
processes which require the capacities of the individual mind 
and are so treated by psychology; but the capacities of the 
mind should not be identified with the subject-self of the 
coexistential dimension to which the product appears, for 
this is itself a product. 

We may say, then, that perceiving stands for two things 
which are quite different: (i) processes in the mind of a syn- 
thetic character; and (2) a supposed act of apprehension to 
explain the bridging of a chasm between the inner and the 
outer sphere of the field of experience as these are understood 
at the level of Natural Realism. As I see the situation, the 
epistemologist who supports immediate realism stresses the 
second meaning and accepts a peculiar mental act of appre- 
hension. I have tried to point out why I believe he is 
mistaken. 

But Mr. Moore seems to have in mind not so much blue 
as a quality of a thing as blue as a sensation. Certainly, 
his terminology is ambiguous at the present day when it is 
the psychologist who uses the term ''sensation." The psy- 
chologist is ''conscious of" the sensation of blue. The 
sensation of blue is thus an object for him. It is an object 
in that realm which he calls the stream of consciousness. Why, 
then, does he give it this cumbersome name which suggests 
to the unwary that it is a double phenomenon? The reason 
is that for common sense the physical world is primary and 
has become the reductive and base of reference for the 
inner world. When we remember that the physical world of 
which we are aware is looked upon as common, while the 
psychical world is considered private, we can understand why 
language has emphasized the subordination of sensations to 
qualities of things. Reference to the inner world is secured 
indirectly by means of the supposedly common world of 
things. The idea of "quality of" dominates the use of blue 
as an adjective. We tell what sensation we have by indicat- 
ing the quality; but if we said ''a blue sensation," this would 



1 



ii6 CRITICAL REALISM 



suggest that the sensation is a thing of which blue is a 
quahty. Mr. Moore saw this, but misread it. The distinc- 
tion between sensation of blue and blue as a quality of a 
thing is inseparable from the contrasted outlooks repre- 
sented by the two things.^ 

A sensation of blue is, then, a mental element of which we 
can be conscious in introspection. We may think about it 
in various ways. As an object of our thought, it is independ- 
ent of these thoughts about it much as a toothache is 
independent of our thoughts concerning it. But this relative 
exteriority of things to which we take the cognitive attitude 
to the various ideas we may entertain regarding them is a 
standard characteristic of reflection. Unless there were this 
stability on the part of elements of the field, reflection would* 
be impossible; the least thought would blur things. 

The conclusion at which we have arrived is that mental 
elements are experiences so far as they are present in the 
unity of the field with the subject-self. It is in this 
sense that they enter consciousness. They are not, how- 
ever, apprehended in any unique way by the subject-self. 
What makes it seem so to us until we take second thought is 
the dominance of the self in introspective reflection and the 
part played by it in the control of voluntary attention. Hence 
it is best to relinquish the phrase which Berkeley made famous ; 
it has become meaningless with the denial of the construction 
which it was used to interpret. For the same reason, it is 
useless to attempt to modify the phrase into percipere or 
sentire. Mental elements have their own nature and are 
present with the subject-self in an intimate unity, but they 
are no more dependent on the subject-self than the subject- 
self is dependent on them. This is evidently Hume's posi- 
tion, modified by a keener sense of the unity of the field. 
This field, which is so complex for the normal man while he I 
is awake, may at other times drop to a simplicity which is 
hardly realizable. In sleep, and when one is just recovering 
from an anaesthetic, it may consist of mental elements in a 
field which has no definite structure. At these low levels the 

1 We must remember that psychology is a special science and accepts in many ways that 
outlook of common sense which we have called Natural Realism. This fact tinges its terminology. 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 117 

sense of self often disappears and we say that we lose con- 
sciousness. It does not follow, however, that there are no 
mental elements present in the organism. If we may believe 
the results of abnormal psychology, quite the contrary is the 
case. There is unconscious consciousness, or, to put it in a 
less paradoxical form, there are mental elements which are 
not present to a subject-self. Thus when I am told that I 
cannot have a feeling unless I am conscious of it, the question 
arises whether the two ''I's" are the same. The subject-self 
which we immediately experience is merged by common sense 
with the body as the individual; presence to it seems, there- 
fore, to be essential to relation to the individual. The more 
dominant the self becomes, the more does this appear to 
reflection to be necessary. This higher unity in which refer- 
ence to the self qualifies all experiences is only a developm.ent 
within the field. There is no good reason to hold that all 
mental elements connected with the organism must be in the 
field. In truth, recent investigation tends to show that this 
is not the case and that the field in which the self dominates 
is empirical and that its basis can be disrupted by dissociation. 

Let us now glance at^the supposed cognitive relation which 
connects the mental with the non-mental. We saw how 
important this was considered by Russell and by Moore. This 
relation between mind and something other than mind is 
held to constitute the mind's power of knowing things. If 
our analysis be true, this element of relation is simply a 
metamorphosis of the togetherness which we found to 
characterize the field of the individual's experience from the 
beginning, ''AH knowing," writes Mr. Alexander, ''is a 
togetherness of the mind and the object." The significance 
of this statement can be better gauged when we remember 
that the objects which are actually present in the field of the 
individual's experience are constructs which depend on the 
past experience of the individual. Is it not evident that we 
have in immediate realism the abiding influence of Natural 
Realism? (If I remember rightly, Mr. Alexander started 
out with the ideal of the description of experience.) 

But the contrast between the mind and what is not the 
mind does exist as a distinction of which we are aware and 

9 



ii8 CRITICAL REALISM 

which we do not seen to be able to avoid. The inner sphere 
constantly grows more definite and complex and, like the 
subject-self and the mental processes which form its vivid 
nucleus, links itself to the body. In this way it secures a 
justified contrast with the outer sphere, which consists of 
things obviously independent of the body. This inner sphere 
thus qualified is thought of as the mind of the individual. 
This is the logic of the development of the stream of conscious- 
ness attached to the body and yet somehow cognizant of the 
body and other non-mental things. Common sense does not 
go so far as psychology, but stops with a mind, connected with 
a body, which knows non-mental things. This is where 
Mr. Alexander seeks to take it up. We may say, then, that 
the contrast between mind and the non-mental is not primi- 
tive and intuitive, as the immediate realists hold, but develops 
within experience. What mind really is, is a problem which 
psychology and logic are just beginning to solve. We have 
advanced far enough to recognize that it extends farther than 
either common sense or immediate realism supposes. The 
distinction is, however, an important one for epistemology ; 
we shall use it as the basis for a mediate realism. 

But is there any mark by means of which the mental can 
infallibly be known? Moore and Russell believe that we can 
become aware of consciousness or the mental and know that 
it is different from the non-mental. Thus these writers en- 
tertain no doubt as to the distinguishing features of the 
mental as such. We, on the contrary, have been led to hold 
that the ordinary contrast between the mental and the non- 
mental is one within the mental as a whole. These are 
species of the mental, as it were, whose difference of assign- 
ment is due to a difference of role played in the economy of 
the field of experience. Every element in the field is mental, 
although the individual does not experience them as mental 
in the contrast sense. Those which belong to the sphere of 
objects qualified as known or perceived are, instead, experi- 
enced as physical or non-physical, but not as mental. Only 
in introspection do we have all the objects which are experi- 
enced qualified as mental. This is one of the reasons why! 
idealism seems foolishness to the beginner. Mental is a 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 119 

contrast-meaning, and it appears that idealism wishes to 
make it absolute. It is a mistake to suppose that the field 
of experience appears to the individual as a unity; that 
aspect is in the background. Moreover, consciousness is not 
a birthmark which can be found in the elements. The inti- 
mate unity and personal character of the field as a whole is 
a discovery made by reflection in the face of such mean- 
ings as ''commonness," ''permanence," and "independence," 
which surround these elements like an atmosphere. Mental, 
in the inclusive sense, is a new meaning which has to gain 
mastery through a reflective struggle. 

There is, however, a characteristic of the field which sup- 
ports the new meaning after it has once been achieved. This 
is the variability of the clearness of objects due to attention. 
We have no reason to believe that objects vary in this manner 
in their own right. Variation in clearness is not the same as 
a variation in intensity. Clearness does not appear to be a 
quality of objects, yet it is very intimate. Those who have 
followed the argument thus far will, I am sure, agree with me 
that variation in clearness is the sign and seal of the mental 
character of all experiences. It is the expression in the co- 
existential dimension of that vital unity which psychology 
has brought to light. 

Thus far we have treated the more general distinctions of 
the field of experience. With a knowledge of these as a basis, 
it is possible to avoid the grosser errors to which theory of 
knowledge is prone. There still remain certain more reflec- 
tive distinctions which require careful interpretation. The 
three which are important for epistemology are as follows: 
(i) the distinction between an immediate experience and the 
thought of it; (2) the contrast between an object as an ex- 
istence and the concept of it or knowledge about it; (3) the 
difference between the use of the word "idea " in contemporary 
logic and its traditional use in epistemology. We shall take 
these up in their present order. 

The best way of approach to the implications of the con- 
trast between an immediate * experience and the thought oj 
it is through Hume. For Hume, an immicdiate experience 
is an impression; an impression is vivid and lively and, in 



I20 CRITICAL REALISM 

general, easily distinguishable from thoughts or ideas which 
are less lively. Moreover, these thoughts are copies of pre- 
ceding impressions. By the term **copy'' Hume has in mind 
two things: (i) the resemblance between the thought and the 
impression; (2) the fact that one is supposed to precede the 
other and make it possible. In these three assumed facts of 
decreased vividness, resemblance, and temporal posteriority 
on the part of thoughts in relation to impressions, we have 
the ground of the distinction between them. So long as we 
identify thoughts with images, psychology accepts this analy- 
sis. It has, however, added a physiological basis to the con- 
trast. Images are centrally aroused, while impressions are 
peripherally aroused. But psychology has also asked why 
we are able to distinguish between impressions, or percepts, 
and ideas. Hume took too much for granted at this point. 
In the first place, there is not between an idea and the original 
percept as regards vividness the degree of difference that he 
assumes. Besides, even were there the marked difference 
between them which he supposed, we have no right to assume 
that the individual possesses an intuition of the meaning of 
this difference. He must learn by bitter experience. We 
need not enter very fully into the psychology of the knowl- 
edge of this contrast between ideas and percepts. Common 
sense is aware of the difference between things and the 
thoughts of things. 

So long as the reproduction of ideas is subordinate to 
anticipations leagued with action, memory in the strict sense 
cannot develop. Memory is a recognition of an idea-object 
and, along with this, the realization that the real or perceptual- 
object is absent. Such recognition of the idea-object is due 
to associations and is not essentially different from the recog- 
nition of perceptual objects. The idea-object tends to be taken 
for the perceptual-object, yet, because it belongs to the class 
of ideas, cannot be so taken. It is this tension between two 
ways of taking the recognized idea-object which gives the 
meaning of representation. The present context, which is 
different from the old, especially on the side of purpose, and 
the fact that it is an idea-object, make it a memory; the 
ideational similarities together with the recognitive associations 



I 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 121 

make it a memory of a definite thing. It must be remembered 
that memories of things are constantly being tested by appeal 
to a new immediate experience of the thing remembered. The 
idea-object as remembered can in this way be compared with 
the perceptual-object. The selection of the perceptual- object 
with which it is to be compared is thus made by the idea. All 
this is required before it is possible to have the facts of de- 
creased vividness, resemblance/ and temporal posteriority 
brought out by reflection. 

Let us glance at the nature of representation, or reference, 
as it is indicated by this analysis. It seems to be entirely 
empirical and to be a function of the meanings which surround 
the idea-object as a result of experience. The idea-object 
is first self-sufficient and non-referring. It is recognized and 
tends to be taken as a thing; but it is qualified by experience 
as only an idea. In consequence, it is experienced as an idea 
of the thing which it tends to be taken for. This seems to me 
to be the logic of the development of reference ; but of course 
this way of taking an idea-object is so familiar to us that it 
is almost immediate. 

Now in memory, as in ideational experience in general, 
the 'particular image which stands out for introspection is 
not as fundamental as it is often taken to be. Memory is a 
case of knowledge, and in knowledge the system, or experienced 
organization of associations, is the fundamental fact. This 
conceptual object is not, as in fancy, felt to be under the free 
control of the self. That which we remember is held to be as 
objective as that which we perceive. Our attitude is that of 
belief. A memory would seem, then, to be a complex imme- 
diate experience qualified by certain meanings which introduce 
a contrast with past experience into its heart. Another point : 
the component parts of a memory-system may conflict, and 
this fact reveals the looseness of a memory in contrast with 
the stability of a percept. I may know that a building is of 
a certain color, — I think in words, and for me this knowledge 
is connected with a word, ''red'' for instance, — yet the visual 
image may persist in being grayish. Thus the inadequacies, 

, , 1 Of course, the amount of resemblance depends upon the purpose. We may think about 

J2 a clock and have not much more than a word in mind. 



122 CRITICAL REALISM 

and even errors of images, may be realized without resort to 
a new immediate experience. 

At this place it may be well to criticise the position often 
taken by psychologists toward these problems. Since we 
are now aware that even physical things, as experienced, are 
thing-experiences and are mental even though they are consid- 
ered by the individual to be non-mental and independent, 
we are not so apt to feel the pressure to get outside the 
mind in thinking that the psychologist feels with his tend- 
ency to a juxtaposition of consciousness as a stream and that 
which it knows. A criticism of the outlook of Stout will 
make my meaning clearer. ''Thus sense impressions and 
images are means by which we perceive or imagine mate- 
rial things and their qualities, states, and processes. We 
cannot imagine a horse without having an image of it; but 
the image in our heads is evidently not what we intend to 
refer to. It cannot be simply identified with the object 
of the mental act which we call thinking of a horse.'* 
(Stout, Some Fundamental Points in the Theory oj Knowl- 
edge, p. 3.) I fear that the influence of Bradley's reaction 
against the psychology of Mill is evident in this statement. 
We do not experience images primarily as in our heads; 
that view is the result of the reflective assignment of the 
image to the stream of consciousness as opposed to the 
world of things. When we think of a horse, the image is a 
part of the object; or, to put it more accurately, what is 
afterwards called the image is a part of the object which we 
think. This object is classified by the psychologist as a con- 
cept, and the image is an analyzable part of the concept; 
but the whole concept is just as much in the head of the indi- 
vidual as is the image. Neither are, however, experienced 
as in the head. Professor Alexander has realized this fact, 
but, unfortunately, has taken a description of the immediate 
experience for an epistemological finality, whereas it is only | 
the foundation for epistemology as against the special view- 
point of psychology. When the psychologist analyzes the I 
experience of thinking of an object, he is forced to recognize | 
two elements within the stream of consciousness: (i) ''A 
thought-reference to something which, as the thinker means 



I 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 123 



or intends it, is not a present modification of his individual 
experience''; (2) *'A more or less specific modification of his 
individual experience, which determines the direction of 
thought to this or that special object/' This last is called 
the content. Strictly speaking, however, ' we are not aware 
of the content, but of the object which is present to the subject- 
self. This mysterious thought -reference is introduced to 
counteract the evident fiatness of mere content. 

We pass next to the distinction between an existence and the 
concept of it, or knowledge about it. This structure is fundamental 
for the capacity to think a critical realism. Immediate realism 
makes the mistake of building on a contrast not adapted to reflec- 
tive knowledge. The contrast between the mind and its ideas, 
and existences independent of these but known by them, is 
really a reflective one which critical experience only strengthens. 
We shall try to show that knowledge is not a matter of direct 
apprehension by the mind of what is non-mental. That is 
too simple a theory to cover the facts, and even common sense 
is not entirely sympathetic with it. I am unable to under- 
stand how a thinker trained in psychology can for a moment 
entertain it. But in the present chapter we are concerned with 
empirical analyses of distinctions which the mind has built up 
and uses, and not with their epistemological implications. 

In the first chapter we saw why the distinction between a 
percept, or thing-experience, and the physical thing arose; 
the percept is qualified as personal and causally connected 
with the physical thing, while the thing retains the meanings 
of independence and perdurableness. We think the thing 
and perceive the percept. Soon, however, a like fission 
threatens the thing which is contrasted with the percept. 

J We think or know or conceive the physical thing. But we 
can make mistakes in regard to it and are convinced that we 
do so. For these reasons, and others which will come out later, 

i man has been forced to go further and to distinguish objects 
of his thoughts from objects as existing. And the more he 
studies the objects of his thinking, the more he is aware of 
their history and the more convinced is he that they are con- 
structions made upon the basis of his experiences. Our realistic 
attitude toward the world, nevertheless, continues unshaken. 



124 



CRITICAL REALISM 



The consequence is an increased emphasis on the distinction 
between objects existing outside the mind and the objects 
of our thinking. Thus a further fission of the independent 
thing arises. It breaks up now into the object of our thinking, 
or our concept, and the object-as-existing. The stages in 
development from the level of Natural Realism correspond 
to this retrogression of the independent, or non-mental, thing. 
At first the object-as-existing is identified with the thing- 
experience which contains perceptual and conceptual elements ; 
then comes the contrast between the percept in the mind of 
the individual and the thing which is the object of thinking; 
and, finally, there arises the contrast between the object of 
thinking and the thing-as-existing. In all these stages the 
realistic outlook with its meanings remains, and I can see in 
the movement no hope for the idealist unless the defeat of 
the immediate realist along with himself gives him sufficient 
comfort. I give a diagram to make this movement clearer: 

The Field of the Individual's Experience 
Inner Sphere Outer Sphere 

a Personal a Independent 

Dominant Meanings Dominant Meanings b Impersonal 

b Mental c Non-mental 

First Level 

(Natural Realism) 

Subject-self Cognitive Attitude Physical Things 

Second Level 

(Scientific Realism) 

Boundaries between inner sphere and outer sphere no longer marked. 

PerceT)ts of 
Subject-self Cognitive Attitude Concents of Physical Things 

Third Level 
(Advance of the Personal) 
Inner sphere now absorbs the outer sphere. 
Thing-experiences 
Subject-self Cognitive Attitude Concepts 

Propositions 
Fourth Level 
(Critical Realism) 

Thing-experiences 
Subject-self Cognitive Attitude Concepts 

Propositions giving 
Knowledge about 



Physical? 
Things 



Physical 
Things 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 125 

Now the objects of thought are usually termed ideas or 
[concepts and are set in opposition to the existences of which 
they are said to be ideas. Thus we contrast the sun as an 
existence with the idea of it formed by astronomers. This 
, idea consists of a series of propositions about the sun. We 
[know that the sun is nearly ninety-two million nine hundred 
thousand miles distant from the earth, that it possesses a 
corona, that its density is little more than a quarter of the 
earth's density, and so forth. Our ideas are supposed to con- 
tain knowledge which is referred to the existent thing. It is 
[this reference which is symbolized by the preposition *'of." 
I When we appreciate the high level of reflection at which this 
I contrast between idea and existence can be used, we realize 
that we possess in it the means to harmonize the Advance 
of the Personal with its enlarged view of mind and the meanings 
of Natural Realism. The concept, idea, or object of thought 
is personal, while the object-as-existing is independent. 

It must not be forgotten that the antithesis between the 
object of thought, or the idea, and the object-as-existing is one 
within the field of the individual's experience. We have tried 
to explain its origin and apparent significance. The further 
task of describing the mechanism of the distinction remains. 
The point which I wish to emphasize is that the contrast 
between the mind and that which is independent of it arises 
within the mind and that knowledge is a meaning of like 
empirical character. 

The first level of the distinction between a thing and the 
individual's idea of it is to be found at the stage of Natural 
Realism. For common sense there are two ways of knowing 
things, knowing them immediately or intuitively and know- 
ing them conceptually or representatively. (C/. William 
James, The Meaning of TriUh, p. 43.) Let us take the 
example chosen by James. What do we mean by saying 
that we here know the tigers in India? The tigers are quali- 
fied as absent, yet they are present to our thought. James 
is rightly averse to making a mystery of this peculiar presence- 
in-absence. To speak of the intentional inexistence of the 
tigers in our thought does not seem to him to solve the 
problem. Certainly representative knowledge must not be 



126 CRITICAL REALISM 

made into a mystery; but this desire to escape mystery 
does not justify the adoption of that metaphor of pointing 
which has been characteristic of pragmatism. But if con- 
ceptual knowledge is a case of pointing, what is the pointing 
known as? James's answer to this question is as follows: 
''The pointing of our thought to the tigers is known simply 
and solely as a procession of mental associates and motor 
consequences that follow on the thought, and that would 
lead harmoniously, if followed out, into some ideal or real 
context, or even into the immediate prCvSence of the tigers." 
{Cf. note on pp. 44-45.) When we examine this discussion 
closely, we find that he is combating the view that images 
taken by themselves are self -transcendent. This is the mys- 
tery to which he is opposed. Only one other possibility 
seems open to him, viz., that ''To know an object is here 
to lead to it through a context which the world supplies.'' 
To know is "only an anticipatory name for a further asso- 
ciative and terminative process that may occur, "^ (P. 46, 
and note.) 

This analysis of knowing is a beautiful example of the fact 
that the psychologist is most at home in the temporal dimension 
of consciousness. It is the ambulatory relation between image 
and renewed percept which he has in mind. And, assuredly, 
an image, as the psychologist understands that term, cannot 
transcend itself. An image is an object of thought and not a 
thought-of . Let us recall our examination of memory. We 
saw that the image is only a part of the object of memory. 
The object involves a system qualified by meanings. When 
we desire we can make the system explicit in a series of 
propositions of which the object known or remembered is the 
subject. This expansion is felt to be a development of 
the object known. The attitude taken by the individual all 
through is that of cognition or acceptance. Now, in contrast 
to memory, when one thinks of an object one does not have in 
mind the fact that the object has been experienced before. 
We conceive or think objects and remember our experiences 
of them. ("For when memory actually takes place, one 

1 This is the so-called instrumentalist view of knowledge, which is really an expression of 
idealism. 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 127 

must say that the process in the soul is such that one formerly 
heard, perceived, or thought the thing." Aristotle On 
Memory and Recollection.) When I think an object, there is 
for the time being no dual role played by the object; the object 
seems to be present to my contemplation. But common 
sense introduces a new motive, since it regards perception as 
the basic form of knowledge because the independent thing is 
supposed to be present to the observer in perception. We see 
here the influence of Natural Realism. Hence, an object which 
is thought of is contrasted with the same object as it is 
perceived. We are, accordingly, said to have an idea of the 
object. This interpretation is the more natural, inasmuch as 
we make mistakes in our thinking of objects that we do not 
make in perceiving. The result is, we have the object present 
to our minds so that it is recognized; but it is qualified as an 
idea by means of the motives referred to above. This is the 
genetic logic of intentional inexistence, or presence in absence. 
So engrained is the conviction that only in perception are 
physical things actually present to the mind, that the object 
of thought, although it evidently presents itself as present in 
another way, is called an idea or concept or thought of the 
thing. Thus we speak of thinking of a thing or conceiving a 
thing as practically synonymous with having a thought of a 
thing or a concept of a thing. 

Those immediate realists who are opposed to Pragmatism 
tend to stress the fact that thinking is a type of cognition. 
So far as this brings out the fact that the individual's attitude 
in thinking of an object is as cognitive as it is in perceiving, 
they are correct, ''The ambulation from idea to percept," 
writes Mr. Alexander, '4s not cognition in general, but the 
special case of passing from an imperfect cognition of the 
object to a completer one." As a matter of fact, interests other 
than knowing make us desire perception. Conception is 
not a less perfect cognition than perception; it is, instead, a 
more adequate mode where the purpose is not merely to 
secure an idea of the sensible appearance of the thing. When 
this more penetrative character of conception is realized, the 
way is prepared for a new view of knowledge. The individual 
is not satisfied with perception, but considers it a means to 



128 CRITICAL REALISM 

knowledge. Indeed, he begins to ask himself whether there are 
really two kinds of knowledge about the physical world, one 
in which the object is present in his field of experience and 
one in which it is present representatively/ 

So far as common sense is reflective, the thing perceived is 
the existence, and the object of thought is the concept of it. 
Now, when Natural Realism breaks down and the thinker 
comes to the conclusion that the percept, or thing-experience, 
is not the physical thing, he carries the same manner of 
speaking over to the realm of what was supposed to be intuitive 
knowledge. He speaks of a percept of the thing just as, 
before, he spoke of an idea of the thing. Thus the contrast 
continues after its first historical basis has been removed. 
The preposition ' * of ' ' symbolizes the reference or pointing which 
is just as necessary in one case as in the other. The contrast 
in mind in both instances is that between what is mental 
and what is independent of mind. But what are ideas ideas 
of now? Not of percepts, for it is recognized that concepts 
involve knowledge gained from many percepts by means of 
those mental processes which we call thought. We continue 
to mean by them concepts of existences which are independ- 
ent of the mind. They leap to the front in science as the 
more adequate mode of knowledge. Once pass beyond the 
level of Natural Realism, and it is more than doubtful 
whether the old • contrast between immediate knowledge of 
the physical world and representative knowledge has not 
lapsed. All it now seems to stand for is the fact that con- 
cepts are based on a more primary experience. 

So long as we remain at the level of Natural Realism, the 
nature of reference is clear. The world appears open to obser- 
vation ; things are where they are seen and are seen where 
they are. Thinking involves a dimmer presence of this world; 
at least, concepts which we know are of the things we have 
seen or of things like them. But when Natural Realism breaks 
down, how shall we word this contrast? If the existence to 
which the object of thought referred, turns out to be a thing 
experience, what shall we do? What we must do is to throw 
away the view that knowledge is ever the immediate presence 
of the physical thing in the field of experience. We at last 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 129 

distinguish between presence to the psycho-physical individual 
and presence in experience. For Natural Realism these are 
identical. Reflection, however, brings out the fact that the 
presence of the physical thing to the individual is the condition 
for the presence of the thing-experience in the field of the indi- 
vidual's experience. In this way, the Advance of the Personal 
and the causal theory of perception which is worked out in 
detail by science and admitted by common sense are harmon- 
ized with the realistic meanings which will not down. Thus 
physical things are causally connected with percepts and help 
to control their development, but are not perceived. What is 
perceived does not cause its own perception. But we are able 
to conceive this ahsence-in-presence of the physical thing by 
means of the distinction between the thing and' the thought 
of it which we already possess. The presence-in-absence of 
thought makes thinkable the absence-in-presence of perception. 
We realize at last that knowledge cannot be the presence of 
the object known in the field of experience. The logical 
consequence is that perception loses its primacy as a mode of 
knowledge and becomes, in the main, a means to knowledge. 
When it is once realized that all knowledge of the external 
world is mediate, the question shifts to the problem of the 
adequacy of knowledge. Need we emphasize the fact that, 
at this level, conception gains the day? All scientific knowl- 
edge is of this sort. But it is false to make the contrast too 
harsh. Both psychology and logic are informing us that 
conceptual material is absorbed by perception and that the 
two are more continuous than we had supposed. The main 
difference lies in the fact that a perspective is indissolubly 
linked with perception which reflection can remove from con- 
ception {cf. Chap. 11).^ 

That we do and can think a realism in which we distinguish 
between the objects present in thought and the objects as 
existing which are no longer identified with our thing- 
experiences seems to me indubitable. It is obvious that we 
do this by means of the development of a distinction char- 
acteristic of Natural Realism. The higher levels build, as 

1 It is evident that I differ from M. Bergson both in regard to the nature of perception and 
the adequacy of conception as a mode of knowledge of nature. 



I30 CRITICAL REALISM 

we should expect, on the lower level, and the idealistic 
motives incite to this growth from immediate to mediate 
realism. That, as we shall try to show later, is their func- 
tion; and it is unfortunate that they have not been seen in 
this light. Only after we have met idealism fairly, shall 
we be able to state what a critical realism must mean by 
''knowledge." It is evident even now that pointing, or 
reference, is within experience. 

Now the objects of thought in contrast to objects as 
existing, or existences, are usually spoken of as ideas in the 
traditional epistemology. These ideas are supposed to mediate 
knowledge of an independent world. It is evident that we 
agree with this outlook, although our view of knowledge is not 
the traditional one. 

We come now to the final distinction of the three to which 
we called attention, the difference between the use of the word 
''idea'' in contemporary logic and its traditional use in epis- 
temology. The point is important, because were the reader 
to confuse these two uses he would be bewildered by recent 
controversial writings in which one school, intoxicated by its 
supposed discovery of the logic implicit in scientific method, 
proclaims in season and out that ''ideas" are but suggestions, 
hypotheses, theories, or conjectures entertained during reflection 
in response to a specific problem which arises within experience. 

In spite of the strictures I have felt compelled to pass, I 
have a deal of sympathy with the logical analysis of reflec- 
tive thought made by these thinkers. (See especially the 
first five chapters of Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory, The 
quotations will be made from these.) Let us /glance at this 
analysis in order to gain a clear notion of what is meant 
by an "idea"; we shall then be able to determine whether 
the presence of these ideas and their function conflict with 
ideas in the epistemological sense of the term. 

It is the situation as a whole which calls forth and directs 
thinking. "Positively, it is the whole dynamic experience 
with its qualitative and pervasive identity of value, and its 
inner distraction, its elements at odds with each other, in 
tension against each other, contending each for its proper 
placing and relationship, that generates the thought-situation" 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 131 

(p. 38). This whole situation is objective. To use our ter- 
minology, it is ''the field of the individual's experience/' 
Naturally enough, however, it is not reflectively qualified 
as mental. The outlook of the individual who refiects on 
specific problems is more apt to be that of the context within 
which he is working. If he is a plain man, his world will have 
the structure and characteristic meanings of Natural Realism. 
If he is a scientist, the point of view will be that of scientific 
realism. The total situation within which reflection works 
simply i5, much in the same way that the environment is to 
an organism. The total situation is, as it were, the universe 
for the speciflc problem which breaks out within it. It is in 
this sense that it is objective. Now the conflicting situation 
inevitably polarizes itself. There is something which remains 
secure, unquestioned, and there are elements which are ren- 
dered doubtful and precarious. The field is thus distributed 
between ''facts — "the given, the presented, the Datum — and 
"ideas," the ideal, the conceived, the Thought. The Datum 
is, so far as it is uninterpreted, crude, raw, unorganized, brute; 
the Ideatum is only a suggestion. Thus datum and ideatum 
are cooperative instrumentalities for economical dealing with 
the maintenance of the integrity of experience. Such a 
specific process leads to the rejection of certain ideata as 
fancies, misconceptions, errors. They are then adjudged 
subjective and given merely a psychical existence. We must 
remember, however, that the term, psychical, is larger than 
the subjective in this sense. When, after due reflection, an 
idea is accepted as solving the problem in hand and restoring 
unity to experience, it merges with the datum to become an 
objective, cosmic fact. This is, in brief, the character of 
reflective thought and the function of "ideas" therein. 

With all this, if it be considered an analysis of concrete 
thinking, I would agree. It is only when epistemological 
significance is read into it that I would call a halt. Reflective 
thinking does arise under the spur of doubt and does seek to 
restore unity to experience. There are no absolute facts 
or data which are independent of this active process of reor- 
ganization. "The datum is given in the thought-situation, 
and to further qualification of ideas and meanings. ' ' As against 



132 . CRITICAL REALISM 

Lotze, Professor Dewey certainly makes his point — as is 
practically admitted, for instance, by Bosanquet. Lotze is 
involved in a tangle of contradictions. Given a thought -in- 
itself which acts externally on material, and the following 
dilemma results: ''either thought is separate from the matter 
of experience, and then its validity is wholly its own private 
business; or else the objective results of thought are already 
in the antecedent material, and then thought is either 
unnecessary, or else has no way of checking its own perform-, 
ances'' (p. 72). We shall see that Kant's system is open 
to similar objections. Certainly we cannot test scientific 
systems by the fragmentary observations whose very inade- , 
quacy spurred us on to the discovery of explanations. If ( 
they remain as facts, they are facts which have been inter- 
preted. Of course, if new observations make this interpreta- 
tion questionable, they can drop back to their former status 
as within a tensional situation. Thinking is, therefore, an 
activity through which experience goes in its attempt to 
secure coherence. ''The outcome of thought is the thinking 
activity carried on to its own completion; the activity, on 
the other hand, is the outcome taken anywhere short of its 
own realization, and thereby still going on'' (p. 79). The 
worth of the thinking is to be found in the result or conclu- 
sion ; but this can be tested and understood only in the light 
of its achievement. 

It is interesting that the older English logicians, so far as 
they understand Professor Dewey's argument, agree with it. 
For them, also, coherence, the overcoming of conflicts, is the 
goal of thought ; in a similar way, they repudiate absolute facts 
or data. "In logic as I understand it," writes Bosanquet 
{Truth and Coherence, p. 10), "attempting to follow out 
at a long interval the practice of the masters, there is no 
epistemology in the sense supposed [by Dewey], no treatment 
of thought in itself as opposed to reality in general . . . " 
Evidently, these thinkers agree that knowledge cannot be 
directly tested by a reality taken as an external standard. 
The difference which enters into their logic is due to a difference 
in metaphysical outlook. Of the two, Dewey is the more 
empirical, keeps closer to the standpoint of common sense 



DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD 133 

and science ; but he is inclined to mistake an empirical descrip- 
tion of experience for an explanation. In other words, he is 
too prone to affirm, as does Avenarius, that epistemological 
problems are unreal. 

We shall now consider certain problems the discussion 
of which has been made possible by the exposition above. 
''Ideas," as defined by Dewey, are not objects of thought in 
contrast to objects as existing. Objects of thought in this 
contrast sense are the products of reflective thought as it per- 
forms its function of solving problems of a scientific character. 
Thus they are made possible by "ideas" in the logical sense 
in which they are antithetic to data. Objects of thought 
are tested and accepted meanings, systems of facts and theo- 
ries, or propositions which reflective analysis and synthesis 
have achieved. They represent solutions. Once get clearly in 
mind the difference in temporal and logical status between 
''ideas" and objects of thought in the epistemological sense, 
and the conflict vanishes. It is unfortunate that the English 
language is so poor in technical philosophical distinctions. 
The word ' 'idea" has been used for almost everything under the 
sun by English and American thinkers. Objects of thought 
are objects of thinking as a cognitive attitude succeeding 
thought as a reflective activity. We call them objects of 
thought because we have "perception" in mind as a contrast 
term. It is only after specific problems have been solved and 
conclusions have been achieved that we pass on to this further 
distinction. Of this distinction which arises in the field of 
experience and which specific reflection plays into, we have 
surely said enough in the preceding pages. In the third chap- 
ter, I tried to point out that the pragmatists of the so-called 
''Chicago school" use the term "experience" in a socially 
objective sense. It is because of this naive objectivity that 
they manage to escape the urgency of epistemology. They 
escape it m.uch as the ordinary scientist does. 

A purely external reality cannot furnish a single criterion 
of truth. Tests of truth must be immanent. But to argue 
from this fact to the conclusion that we have no right to 
consider tested results as giving us knowledge of existences 
which cannot enter the field of experience is .unjustified. We 

10 



134 CRITICAL REALISM 

do have such an outlook, and there is nothing self -contradictory 
about it. If thinkers would only be more empirical and mor< 
patient, they would escape many enforced self-deceptions 
In the later chapters we shall see that the conception o: 
control, by existences outside the field of experience, of the 
constructs within the field of experience in accordance with the 
laws of the psycho-physical organism — ^as seen in physiology, 
psychology, and logic — is not only thinkable but unescapa- 
ble. Therefore, knowledge secures an objective basis in realityf 
as a whole, just as it has an objective position in experience. 

All the distinctions with which we have dealt in the last 
two chapters are to be found in the field of the individuaFs 
experience. We have felt that an appreciation of this field 
in its very real complexity is the precondition of any adequate 
epistemology. While we have at various times made sug- 
gestions as to what epistemological conclusions the description 
of the field would warrant, we have endeavored to hold these 
suggestions separate from the empirical description. In the 
same way, we have shown ourselves favorable to a logic which 
is not avowedly epistemological. The relation between fact 
and theory in experience and the nature of judgment are 
empirical problems, and logic is only another science. The 
fault with Lotze's logic, which leads it into the dilemma that 
Professor Dewey has so well criticised, is that its standpoint 
is not homogeneous. Mix logic and epistemology together 
before you have an adequate epistemology or a satisfactory 
logic, and the inevitable product is poor logic and a bastard 
epistemology. But the holding up of such a product to ridicule 
is not a proof that epistemology is a pseudo-discipline. 

The empirical foundation which we have desired is now 
practically complete. We shall pass to a criticism of the 
dominant epistemological theories, using this criticism as a 
means to develop the position which we ourselves hold. 



CHAPTER VI 

AN EXAMINATION OP IDEALISM 

THE mental pluralism at which we have arrived is in 
unstable equilibrium. It is not an epistemology nor, 
a fortiori, a metaphysics; but it is, if our analyses have been 
valid, the indispensable basis of both. Instead of making 
haste to a system under the guidance of emotion or prejudice, 
we have endeavored to achieve a survey of the individual's 
field of experience and the distinctions characteristic of it. 
The Advance of the Personal has been so successful that it 
would be easy to forget the protest that cognition constantly 
J made against the reduction of its objects to percepts and 
j concepts. Were this done, it would be possible to declare the 
sphere of objects known to be merely constructs having no 
J cognitive import. In like manner, it would be easy to 
forget the fact that the individual's thing-experiences always 
seem conditioned by factors of a causal nature. All this 
J has been done again and again on less apparent evidence for 
idealism than has been offered in the preceding parts of our 
argument. But we have undertaken an analysis of experience 
, of the broadest and least biased character. It is our duty, 
j therefore, to discover and to marshal together the motives for 
I realism as well as those for idealism and, when this empirical 
I task is accomplished, to determine whether or not some out- 
\ look more comprehensive than the customary idealisms and 
realisms may satisfy all these empirical motives. 

In order that this completer examination may be seen to be 
necessary, let us consider the principles upon which idealisms 
base themselves, for, if there be quasi-apriori principles at 
the foundation of idealism, the exhaustive study of the various 
motives which reveal themselves in experience would be a 
work of supererogation. Before we go further, it will be well 
to bear in mind that idealism is seldom offered in a pure form. 
Other tendencies are mingled with it to make it conform more 
to the demands of common sense and of science, And the 

135 



136 CRITICAL REALISM 

whole thus achieved is put under the egis of rehgious and 
ethical values. In brief, idealistic philosophies are substituted 
for idealism. The quasi-apriori principles, to which reference 
has been made, are treated as means to the development of a 
romantic or religious outlook on the world, and, unfortunately 
for the scientific character of these systems, the epistemological 
support is not ^always separated out and tested disinterestedly. 
For this reason, the criticism passed upon idealism by those who 
are advocates of clear-cut, logical analysis must face the danger ' 
of appearing carping and little-minded. Their arguments 
cannot be in the grand manner. But stricter methodological , 
demands in every field have had to pass through the fire of : 
adverse criticism. History, for example, has only recently •. 
become exigent and made its postulates and methods a subject ^ 
for impartial investigation. With this warning given, I hope 
that the framework of idealism discussed below may not seem 
too bare and unfamiliar. 

Let us examine the idealistic principles which stand in the 
way of a realistic view of knowledge. The first principle is of a 
formal character and is somewhat as follows. The terms * 'sub- 
ject'' and ' 'object" are relative and imply each other; hence a 
thing cannot be an object unless there is a subject for which 
it is an object. Other examples of relative terms which 
involve each other are usually advanced to support the 
contention that subject and object are meaningless expressions 
when separated from their unity of implication. A ruler 
implies subjects whom he rules; a doctor, patients whom he 
doctors; a shepherd, sheep which he herds. But we can think 
of a sheep without implying that there must be a shepherd. 
These terms are only semi-correlatives. Let us recall the 
attitude taken by common vSense as described in the chapter on 
Natural Realism. Things are supposed to exist in the physical 
world whether we perceive them or not. Our perception is 
an event or act which reveals them to us as they are, and has 
no influence upon them. These are thought of as semi- 
correlatives and not as relatives. Again, when we say that we 
have an idea of a person, we do not think that our idea is 
literally connected with the person. The phrase *'of a person" i 
tells what sort of an idea it is and is thus the result of an 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 137 

analysis of the idea. The idea means to give knowledge of the 
person, but does not assert that, as an idea, it is existentially 
related to the person. In order to possess the idea, the knower 
must have had direct or indirect causal relation with the 
person known but this causal relation may have been in the 
distant past. Our conclusion is, that neither in the subject- 
object antithesis nor in the more complicated trinity of 
subject, idea-object, and existent do we have anything 
stronger than semi-correlatives. 

Another point should be noted in this connection. The 
relatives which are usually selected as throwing light upon 
the relativity of subject and object involve two things which 
act upon each other or are in spatial relation. The ruler 
acts upon the ruled, the doctor upon the patient, the shepherd 
upon the sheep. We have to do with objective relations 
between things. But is it not begging the question to assume 
that in knowing we have to do with a relation between things 
of either a passive or an active character? Knowledge may 
be something unique in nature for which we can find no good 
analogy in the relations of objects known. 

There are now two possibilities before us. Either there 
is no relation, be it active or passive, between subject (or 
knower) and object (or known), or the relation which exists 
must be discovered by reflection. We have no right to work 
by analogy in the uncritical way that is so often done. 

Now, the immediate realist and the idealist both accept 
a cognitive relation between the knower and the object known. 
They differ, however, in their view of the nature of this rela- 
tion. The immediate realist asserts that it is external and 
does not affect the object known, w^hile the idealist claims 
that it is internal and inseparable from the object. Let us 
examine these two positions to show the a priori character of 
the controversy between them. 

As the reader has no doubt already realized, the current 
forms of idealism are directed mainly against presentative 
or immediate realisms. These realisms hold that an inde- 
pendent object is literally present to the individual's mind 
in knowledge. To the idealist, this literal presence seems to 
involve a mystic power of transcendence, a sort of cognitive 



138 CRITICAL REALISM 

telepathy, which is unthinkable. Unfortunately, in order t' 
combat this error, he sees no point of attack other than aj 
belief in a cognitive relation which binds subject and objec 
together. The object is not independent of the subject, hej 
replies. The relation between them is not external, as you 
would have us believe, but intimate and internal. Thus the 
controversy turns about the nature of a supposed cognitive 
relation. 

The idealist attacks the presentative realist in the follow- 
ing way. The cognitive relation must to some extent modify 
the reality known. Hence it is impossible to know the reality 
as it is apart from this relation. The situation is similar to 
the familiar instance of the palpably absurd, the turning on 
of a light to see the darkness. Consequently, reality becomes! 
a thing-in-itself which we cannot get at. Against this position 
the idealist holds that thought assists in the construction of 
reality; it does not seek a reality as something given inde- 
pendently of mind. That this controversy is not merely a 
scholastic survival appears evident from a study of recent 
philosophical literature. The argument of the idealist is 
used by a keen thinker against the American type of the 
*'New Realism.*' ''Stated broadly, the epistemological prob- 
lem may be said to centre in the question how the same fact I 
can be at the same time a member in the 'objective' and in ' 
the 'subjective' order; how it can be both a physical reality 
and an experiential fact. ... It seems, however, that the 
fact which thus figures in two different orders at once is not 
quite the same fact in both cases. . . Hence the question 
how the fact can be known as it was before the change took 
place." (B. H. Bode, "Consciousness and Its Object," 
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 
Vol. IX, No. 19.) 

The task which presentative realisms thus assume so light- 
heartedly becomes the more insoluble the more consciousness \ 
is admitted to possess a unique centrality or unity. Now, , 
the American type of the "New Realism" differentiates 
itself from the English type by its elimination of an episte- 
mological or entitative consciousness. It looks upon 
consciousness as a relation into which things may enter 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 139 

temporarily. Yet, as we have seen, it is unable to escape the 
age-old shaft of idealism. What, then, is realism to do? To 
maintain dogmatically that the cognitive relation does not 
affect the reality known is a tour de force even more unstable 
as a foundation for a system of philosophy than the idealistic 
principle. 

Let us examine some of the motives which have led to the 

assumption of a cognitive relation. If we can satisfy these 

in another way, we may be able to rise above the interminable 

; controversy as to whether the cognitive relation is internal 

^ or external. 

I If there is no relation between the knower and the known, 
( it is asked, how is knowledge possible ? It becomes inexplicable 
I because there is nothing to compare with it. Knowledge as 
a function seems to bid defiance to time and space; the most 
^ distant past and the farthest reaches of the material cosmos 
J are laid bare to its gaze. So different is it from all other 
acts and processes that it must be adjudged non-natural and 
without a basis in the immediate physiological and psycho- 
logical processes which apparently underlie experience. We 
saw that Natural Realism is open to these charges. For it, 
knowledge seemed to be master of space within limits not 
easily discoverable. But I do not see that the addition of a 
cognitive relation aids matters to any extent. Yet this is 
j what is done. The idealist bridges the apparent gulf which 
\ separates the knower from the things known by the tenuous 
\ rope of a cognitive relation. Is it strange that the presenta- 
tive realist replies by adopting this unique and non-dynamic 
relation and making it external instead of internal? When 
epistemology limits itself to such formal and abstract motives, 
the argument can go on indefinitely. The reply to this will 
be that these formal arguments must be met if the problem 
of knowledge is to be solved. How can a mind know a thing 
if it has no commerce with it? The mind that knows is one 
entity and the object knovv^n is another entity, and knowledge 
surely involves a relation between them. My answer is that 
knowledge involves a commerce between the mind knowing 
I and the thing known, but that this commerce precedes the 
event of knowing and is not identical with it. The mistake 



I40 CRITICAL REALISM 

made is to take the mind as a simple entity whose sole function 
is knowing. Presentative realisms have been especially prone 
to look at the mind in this way. 

But the cognitive relation, if it exists, should be empirically 
discoverable. Let us see whether a relation between the 
knower and the object known is a matter of immediate experi 
ence given as directly as the object itself. So far as I can! 
make out, cognition is an event characterized by an experience! 
called apprehension on the part of the self and an object* 
which is apprehended. The individual takes a peculiar 
attitude toward the object which is present in the field of 
experience. But if this is an adequate description of the 
total experience, where is the cognitive relation which is always 
taken for granted? Is it introduced to obviate an episte- 
mological action at a distance? If so, the assumption is at 
work that a cognitive attitude is an act like a physical act 
and demands something on which and through which to act. 
This assimilation of the mental field to the physical is 
unjustified unless there are strong analogies to urge it. Where, 
however, are the analogies? James Ward, for instance, 
maintains that the subject-object relation is not causal in its 
nature. ''But one thing, I think, we must not do: we must 
not attempt to bring this relation of subject and object under 
the category of cause and effect. . . I only demur to the 
assumption that the subject-object relation itself is causal.'' 
{Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. II, p. 117.) Now, it is 
generally agreed that the causal category is fundamental for 
the physical world. Hence to exclude it from epistemology 
is to admit that the two fields differ markedly. Yet I feel 
certain that many arguments for the cognitive relation are 
based on an assimilation of knowledge to a physical act. As 
has sometimes been pointed out, there is likewise a tendency 
to read the presence of the body in perception into the cogni- 
tive attitude and to confuse spatial relations with a supposed 
cognitive relation. In like manner, there is danger of con- 
ceiving cognition as an act of the mind directed upon an 
object outside the mind. 

There is, however, another motive for the assumption of 
a cognitive relation. It may be asserted that in cognition we 



^A^ EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 141 

experience a unique relation of "presence to," or togetherness. 
The object is together with the self in cognition. This motive 
is probably the strongest one for the assumption of a cognitive 
relation. 

In the chapter on ''Distinctions within the Field," we 
tried to distinguish between the elemental unity of the field, 
which I designated by the term 'togetherness,'' and the more 
special contrasts which were developed within it. Such con- 
trasts arise on the surface of what is a unity of a peculiarly 
intimate sort. The antitheses between the self and the not- 
self, the subject and the object, the past and the present, the 
idea and its object, are examples of contrasts within a basic 
unity. Now, it is a mistake easily made to read into these 
oppositions a relation of a peculiar sort to reconcile them with 
the unity which they seem to outrage. 

If the distinction between the field in which there is no 
sheer separation and the special contrasts which arise within 
it is kept in mind, the nature of the so-called act of cognition 
becomes clearer. The subject-self takes the cognitive attitude 
toward some object in the field. But the subject-self as the 
centre of control is thought of as the ''mind, " while the object 
is regarded as non-mental. We have, in other words, the 
presence in the field of the individual's experience of an object 
which is not considered a part of the mind, and the attitude 
taken toward it on the part of the subject-self. We saw 
how this contrast led common sense to Natural Realism. 
Idealism rebukes Natural Realism and asserts that the object 
is connected with the mind by a relation. We are beginning 
to see that both are right and both are wrong. The object 
directly present to the "mind" in the narrower sense is a 
part of the field and is mental in the larger sense. Here 
idealism is right. However, we do not experience a relation of 
a peculiar sort, but a contrast in which the object is ex- 
perienced as independent. Here Natural Realism is right. 
Enough has been said, I think, to show that the cognitive 
relation is not experienced, but is a creation of reflection. 
When we take the cognitive attitude, there is a contrast of 
parts of the field which are yet together. 

Many idealists have recognized the fact that idealism 



142 CRITICAL REALISM 

really founds itself on the unity of the individuars experience 
rather than on an internal cognitive relation. Since we have 
already persuaded ourselves that this unity is a fact, the 
conclusion which idealism draws from it should be of especial 
interest. Let us glance at Mr. Bradley's use of this empirical 
principle. '*For if, seeking for reality, we go to experience, 
what we certainly do not find is a subject or an object, or 
indeed any other thing whatever, standing separate and on 
its own bottom. What we discover rather is a whole in 
which distinctions can be made, but in which divisions do 
not exist.'' {Appearance and Reality, p. 146.) In contrast 
to the unity of the level of mere sentience, the later level 
contains the contrasts characteristic of the practical and 
theoretic attitudes (p. 463). The interesting feature of his 
treatment is his essential recognition of the dualism of the 
cognitive attitude. ''One or more elements are separated 
from the confused mass of feeling, and stand apparently by 
themselves and over against this. And the distinctive 
character of such an object is that it seems simply to he. If 
it appeared to influence the mass which it confronts, so as to 
lead that to act on it and alter it, and if such a relation quali- 
fied its nature, the attitude would be practical. But the 
perceptional relation is supposed to fall wholly outside of the 
essence of the object. It is in short disregarded, or else is 
dismissed as a something accidental and irrelevant. ' ' (Pp. 460-1 .) 
(The italics are mine.) Now, this analysis is a classic, and 
the empirical idealists should give it due acknowledgment. 
The subject-object relation is not looked upon as a trans- 
cendental mystery, but as a distinction developed in time 
{cf, note on p. 460). Still he retains it, though phrase 
after phrase discounts its conscious presence. With Mr. Brad- 
ley's position I am essentially satisfied, although I am con- 
vinced that the opposition between subject-self and object 
usually dominates the togetherness of the field. 

From the process side, experience does present a unity of 
a progressive sort. Objects do not permanently retain that 
fixity and aloofness with which the cognitive attitude endows 
them. Currents of influence pass from the subjective side 
to the objective and from the objective to the subjective, 



^A^ EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 143 

Reflection remodels and reinterprets idea-objects according 
to some dominant problem or purpose, while feeling floats 
like a veil over the field of the individuars experience. No 
fact stands on its own bottom and successfully denies the 
suzerainty of the whole. Such vital interdependence of the 
parts in the temporal achievements of experience with its 
recognition of the penetrating authority of thought, reflective 
and unreflective, is the teaching of logic and of psychology. 
It is upon this rock that idealism should take its stand rather 
than upon the quicksand of some formal principle. Thought 
is the movement of readjustment and of creative construction 
in the continuous field of the individual's experience. It 
must be borne in mind that this view does not make thought 
subjective, but lifts it from its traditional psychological 
subjectivity to a logical objectivity and places it among the 
objects and ideas whose m.ediation and testing it is. I wish, 
however, to stress emphatically the fact that such thinking 
works within the field of the individuaVs experience. 

But what does this frank admission that the objective 
spheres are open to thought imply? Primarily, that knowl- 
edge is an achievement and not a gift. This, it has always 
seemed to me, is the contribution which idealism makes to 
philosophy. This fact has had few doubters among those 
who have made a name for themselves in the field of science. 
The immediate datum apprehended simply and without 
mental toil and method vanishes upon closer inspection. A 
fact for science and a fact for common sense differ in texture 
and in validity, and they resist in unequal degrees the 
acid-test of new facts and a larger context. We shall agree, 
then, with idealism that knowledge is an achievement, and we 
shall emphasize with subjective idealism that it arises in the 
minds of individuals. We shall, however, deny that the 
cognitive attitude within the individual's field of experience 
is supplemented by a relation which connects the subject- 
self with the object. 

But an unwarranted deduction is drawn by idealism from 
the unity of the individual's experience. The objective 
spheres which grow up in men's minds through the interplay 
of immediate experience and ideational activities until they 



144 CRITICAL REALISM 

bloom forth as worlds open to cognition are adjudged the 
outer limits of reality, beyond which lies emptiness. In other 
words, it is assumed that the individual is unable to refer his 
knowledge to that which is other than experience. To use 
a cosmic parallel, experience is a universe bounded by void 
reaches of space in which the weary imagination can find no 
resting-place, the thing-in-itself being a virtual image whose 
source is discovered by reflection to be within experience. 

The decision of the idealist that extra-experiential reality 
is meaningless rests on two main principles: The principle 
that the causal category has validity only within experience, 
where it links phenomena together and, therefore, cannot 
be employed to join extra-experiential realities with the 
individual's experience; and the principle that ''to be real 
or even barely to exist must be to fall within sentience." The 
first principle is typical of the idealism founded on the theory 
of knowledge of Kant; the second is more characteristic of 
Berkeley. This second principle is to-day championed by 
Bradley. Let us examine, first, the view that the causal 
category cannot be used to connect extra-experiential realities 
among one another and with the individual's experience. To 
understand the meaning of this principle, we must consider 
it in connection with a criticism of the Kantian philosophy. 

A typical statement of the idealist criticism of the realistic 
element in Kant's philosophy is to be found in Miss Calkins 's 
book entitled The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, ' ' Things- 
in-themselves are, by hypothesis, independent of consciousness, 
yet they must be talked about and thought about if they are 
to be inferred as existing. They are drawn, thus, into the 
domain of the self, they become objects of consciousness, no 
longer independent realities" (p. 240). It is evident that 
the assumption is that to know is to bring into consciousness. 
Let us see how this assumption grows out of the Kantian 
point of view. The problem raised is fundamental for the cog- 
nitive import of the categories, and must be faced squarely. 

We have seen that the cognitive attitude encourages the 
development of realistic meanings within the field of the 
individual's experience. Kant realized this fact and called 
his position empirical realism. We may indicate this by a 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 145 

description of the field of the individual's experience. Each 
person thinks of himself as real and at the same time thinks of 
himself as in relations to other persons and to things. These 
are realities on the same level as himself. The individual 
takes the same cognitive attitude toward himself as toward 
others. The content of his mind at any moment is, implicitly 
at least and at certain moments explicitly, a sort of map of 
persons and ph^/^sical things in complex relations to one another. 
All these are thought of as having that independence and 
realness of which Mr. Bradley speaks. When we finally come 
to state our own position, we shall lay great stress upon this 
empirical realism as the natural basis for a more critical realism. 
But, if knowledge involves the categories, and these are entirely 
and uncontroUedly mental, what guarantee have we that knowl- 
edge is not a subjective creation? Once grant that forms 
and relations are contributed by a mind uncontrolled by 
independent realities, and agnosticism undeniably follows. 
But both psychology and logic have long moved from the 
Kantian standpoint. The field of the individual's experience 
is a continuum, and in it continuities and relations are as 
much and as primitively present as the sensory qualities. 
This conclusion, which, in the English-speaking world, owes 
its recognition mainly to the work of James Ward and William 
James, is now becoming generally conceded. It measures up 
to the facts of an unbiased inspection. But the significance 
of this conclusion for theory of knowledge has not been realized. 
Along with the rejection of the Kantian distinction between 
form, contributed by mental faculties, and the inchoate 
manifold of sense has gone a renewed interest in percepts as 
contrasted with sensations. Percepts are now regarded as 
empirical growths whose genesis and characteristics can be 
explained only by the synthetic capacity of consciousness 
working under the control of the environment. The motor 
aspect of consciousness is emphasized in a way that brings 
out this control. Percepts are thus controlled constructs 
developed in the objective sphere of consciousness as thing- 
experiences. The same empirical view of the development 
of the objects in consciousness is being carried to conceptual 
objects. In this domain, the process of construction is 



146 CRITICAL REALISM 

often a conscious one. Let me repeat my definition of thought, 
which fits in with this view. Thought is the movement of 
readjustment and of creative construction in the continuous 
field of the individual's experience. The specific processes 
involved in it, as analysis, synthesis, hypothesis, checking by 
new percepts, etc., are treated in any good logic, so they need 
not be examined here. The main point to be stressed in the 
contrast with the Kantian logic which I have in mind is the 
control of constructive thought by percepts and thus, indi- 
rectly, by the environment. This view of thought may be 
accepted, but the query may at the same time be made, 
How can you be sure that an environment external to con- 
sciousness controls the formation of percepts and, hence, of 
concepts? Psychology assumes it and seemingly for very \ 
good reasons, but, then, psychology is a special science and 
accepts the realism of the physical sciences as a contrast -basis 
for its own material and methods. This objection is the 
classic caveat to the hasty assumption that the standpoint 
of psychology is sufficient to found a realism on; but, if the 
theory that percepts are controlled by the environment can 
be shown not to confiict with theory of knowledge, it and the 
facts which support it point toward a control of the categories 
by the environment and, therefore, to the possibility of a 
mediate realism. 

Before we pass to a criticism of the idealist reductio ad ab- 
surdum of the doctrine of things-in-themselves, i.e.^ in present- 
day terms, of an environment known to be independent of 
consciousness, yet conditioning it, let us contrast the Kantian 
theory of the categories with the implications of the foregoing 
sketch. For Kant, the categories are the pure forms of the 
understanding, a faculty separate from sense and uncontrolled 
by it. There is, consequently, in his theory of knowledge a 
fundamental dualism to begin with. The formal aspect 
of percepts as well as the synthetic principles which furnish 
the supporting structure of scientific knowledge derive from 
the understanding. In other words, all combination, all 
relation of however specific a character, all organization to be 
found in experience comes from the understanding. This 
startling position is partly obscured from the ordinary reader 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 147 

of Kant by the interminable twistings and turnings by means 
of which he covers up what is the only logical doctrine to be 
sifted out. The imagination to which he makes appeal to 
account for the specific combinations which precede the more 
general syntheses of a higher order effected by the understand- 
ing proper is, and can be, nothing but the understanding work- 
ing unconsciously. Moreover, no cue can be found in the 
sensory manifold for the infinite variety of forms and rela- 
tions which make the phenomenal world so complex, for a cue 
would imply the suggestion of the structure and relations of 
phenomena to the understanding, which would have only the 
function of interpreting these indications and bringing them 
out into relief. And this relationship between sense and the 
understanding would make sense the artist and understand- 
ing the artisan. Or, to employ a simile from the field of pho- 
tography, sense would correspond to the condition of the sen- 
sitized plate after the exposure, while the activity of the 
understanding would correspond to the function of the 
developing fluid. Hence, given his crass distinction between 
form and matter, sense and understanding, passivity and 
activity, Kant is forced to make all but the purely qualitative 
side of nature dependent on the arbitrary modeling of the 
mind. And even this counsel of despair is unsatisfactory, 
because qualities, in so far as they are terms, cannot be 
related arbitrarily. To put sounds side by side in space and 
to arrange colors in octaves would hardly be a successful 
method of procedure; yet, upon the Kantian basis, one should 
be as easy as the other. It has been necessary to state Kant's 
primary position thus barely and unsympathetically and to 
separate it from his attempts to overcome the dualism in his 
theory of the constituents of knowledge — attempts which are 
painfully futile — in order to realize the essential nature of the 
categories as he conceives them. The categories are for him 
forms of unity resident in the understanding and applied by it 
] to the material of sense already more or less rationalized by 
the previous work of the imagination, a lower stage of the 
understanding. Hence, that part of experience which is most 
emphasized in science, and in terms of which the structure and 
functions of physical things are stated, is assigned a subjective 



148 CRITICAL REALISM 

origin. To put the consequences of this position on the 
biological side where its implications become more specific and, 
a fortiori, more absurd, the structure and connections of the 
things in the environment to which the body must react in 
order to survive, are subjective assignments legislated by the 
understanding. Knowledge is, then, an amalgam in which 
the most important constituent, that furnished by the under- 
standing, is uncontrolled by things-in-themselves. It is not 
to be wondered at that Kant adjudged things-in-themselves to 
be unknowable. Even if knowledge, as we shall hold, does 
not require the presence of the existent known in consciousness, 
it at least presupposes, as a condition, the control of experience 
by that which is known. This control need not be — as we 
study psychology and logic we realize that it cannot be — of 
a mechanical nature. Kant's mistake, then, was to assume 
a dualistic theory of the constituents of knowledge which 
precluded this control from those reaches of experience in 
which knowledge is ripened. Instead of the control by 
things-in-themselves being continuous, as the methodology 
of science certainly seems to indicate, it is temporary and 
limited to a fictive sense-manifold. 

We are now in a position to develop the implications of our 
own sketch of the locus and control of the categories. In doing 
so, three motives are discovered to point in the same direction, 
and this convergence of distinct investigations to one result 
will give us increased assurance of the correctness of our 
approach. The first motive is the generally acknowledged 
failure of the Kantian theory of the constituents of knowledge. 
The fundamental dualism within experience which it postulates 
leads to an endless number of artificial problems which require 
additional hypotheses. Even were these relatively successful, 
the complexity of the whole would condemn the primary 
assumptions, if a simpler analysis were forthcoming. Hence, 
a theory of the growth of knowledge which accepts a funda- 
mental continuity between perception and thought, in so 
far as it excises the morbid basis on which these artificial 
problems flourish, must be regarded as a step in the right 
direction. The second reenforcing motive is the empirical 
analysis of experience, which, as we have indicated above, is 



^A^ EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 149 

wholly against the Kantian separation of form from matter. 
Instead, relations and categories appear immersed in the ob- 
jective continuum spread out before us and are analyzed out 
and used by thought in the solution of problems which concern 
the interpretation of that continuum. Concepts and univer- 
sals, in short, arise from, and play back into, the perceptual field 
under the spur of either practical or theoretical interests. 
We must not, however, for the sake of simplicity, limit the 
source of the categories to the domain of external perception; 
the inner sphere, also, contributes elements which enrich and 
deepen the construction of such fundamental meanings as 
*' identity,'' "causality," ''time,'' '^substantiality," etc. The 
point to grasp is the growth of the categories from immediate 
experience and the fact that this growth is immanently 
controlled by experiences which lie deeper than our caprice. 
Evidently, the categories do not perform the tremendous 
function assigned to them by Kant, that of accounting for 
all the syntheses to be found in knowledge, when they are 
taken in this empirical way; rather do they interpret and 
I carry further the syntheses from which they arise. They are 
incapable of explaining the continuities and unities which 
characterize experience as such or those powers of analysis 
and of organization which render knowledge possible. Certain 
capacities being given as preconditions of the rise of knowledge, 
! the employment of these and their consequent increase in 
' power and delicacy is due to the material which elicits them 
and which suggests the principles and concepts to be used. 
' In short, organization is never absent from experience, no 
' matter how far down into primitive sentience we go, and the 
lower levels control the higher so far as they set the problems 
jand give the material upon w^hich mental ability is to work. 
^ It is a mistake to regard intelligence as creative apart from 
{that which calls it forth. It is a servant, not a despot. 
[This status of intelligence is brought into relief in science 
!by the constant appeal to new facts to test suggestions and the 
ifruitfulness of facts in suggestions. In this second motive 
which supports an objective basis for the categories, we have 
drawn mainly on the testimony of logic, psychology, and the 
methodology of the sciences. To make the categories grow 
^ 11 



ISO CRITICAL REALISM 

from the perceptual field and to continue responsible to it is to 
transfer to them the possibility of control by things-in-them- 
selves. I shall endeavor to show that such a control exercised 
by things-in-themselves, when it is strengthened by experiment 
and by the necessity for motor adaptations, is a sufficient 
foundation for the degree of knowledge we claim to possess of 
the physical world. What is needed, besides this indication 
of the basis of a realistic knowledge, is the demonstration, as 
against agnostic realism and idealism, that such a knowledge 
of reality external to mind is both thinkable and meaningful. 
We have tried to show that the categories are not contributed 
by the self in the Kantian way, and that they and the knowledge 
which they help to build up are objective to the individual 
and probably responsible to nature. 

If there is every reason to believe that the categories are 
responsive to realities independent of the field of the individ- 
ual's experience, why cannot they assist in giving us knowledge 
about these realities ? Let us examine the idealistic argument 
against things-in-themselves in the light of the foregoing 
criticism of the Kantian theory of the categories. We are 
evidently desirous of showing that things-in-themselves are 
knowable and that they are really what the scientist calls 
physical things. 

The assumption which the idealist makes is that to know 
is to bring within experience in a literal way. The reason for 
this assumption is twofold: first comes the Kantian tradition 
with its subjective note; then comes the limitation of knowl- 
edge to the dualism of the subject-object contrast. Because 
of these assumptions, the thing known is assumed to be 
literally present to the subject-self and to be formed largely by 
the uncontrolled activity of the ego. We have indicated rea- 
sons for the denial of the Kantian outlook ; let us now give our 
reasons for the denial of the view that knowledge necessarily in- 
volves the literal presence in consciousness of the thing known. 

In the fifth chapter, we stressed the distinction between 
the idea and the thing of which it is an idea. The idea, or 
concept, claims to give knowledge of the thing it means. The 
thing is absent, while the idea is present. This idea may 
consist of propositions which are referred to the thing. Here 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 151 

we have the cognitive trinity to which I made reference a 
while ago, subject-self, idea-object (or series of propositions), 
and thing. Let us note at once that the idea-object is present 
in the field of the individual's experience, while the thing may 
be absent. Yet the idea gives knowledge of the thing. We 
have here a structure which can be employed by critical 
realism under the stress of facts to undermine the idealistic 
assumption made by Miss Calkins that to know is to bring 
into consciousness. When we analyze the knowledge of the 
physical world given by science we find that it is reducible to a 
knowledge of the relative sizes, the structure, the active 
properties, and the relations of things. Nowhere do we have 
the actual presence of a physical thing in the field of experience. 
We have, then, good reason to deny the proposition that objects 
to be known must be drawn into the domain of consciousness. 
But, if we can possess knowledge of physical things which 
remain outside the field of experience, what right has a critic 
to assert that we are unable to think of these objects as inter- 

I acting and as affecting ourselves? The fact is, we do so think. 

I In the empirical realism which Kant emphasized, and which is 
little other than a critical statement of Natural Realism, we 
think of ourselves as persons with minds in active relations 
with persons and things. Psychology, in its assumption that 
percepts are induced by stimuli coming from the physical 
environment, is only accepting the realistic outlook common 
to everyone. The further step which reflection forces us to 

i make is to assert that we have knowledge of these interacting 

' things, but that the things themselves do not enter the field 
of consciousness, even though they control it. Since I look 

J upon my experiencing as existentially connected with my body 
and my mind, it is evident that I relate things to my experience 

1 at the same time that I relate them to the psycho-physical 
organism. The truth is that the principle to which the idealists 

- appeal must be restated; it is then robbed of its terrors. The 

j causal category grows up in the outer sphere of experience to 

1 enable us to express our knowledge of the changing relations 
of physical things to one another and to ourselves. The 

i causal category does not join realities, for the very good reason 

i that they join themselves. 



IS2 CRITICAL REALISM 

When we think of a reahty in terms of our knowledge of it 
and connect it with our field of experience by means of the 
causal category, we are really building up a construction within 
our experience as a whole. That we possess such a construction 
cannot be denied. That we are practically forced to make it 
by the characteristics of our experience I hope to demonstrate 
in the next chapter. Kant used it when he asserted that the 
world of phenomena is logically prior to the subjective realm. 
The Kantian phenomenon is the physical thing as known 
by the science of the eighteenth century. Because of his 
logical impersonalism, Kant doubled up on the thing-in-itself. 
I have given many reasons why the Kantian theory of the 
origin of the categories is indefensible. I have also tried to 
show that the Kantian theory of cognition upon which the 
idealist bases his rejection of things-in-themselves as involving 
a contradiction is a presentationalism. With the rejection of 
these two supports, the attack upon the use of the category 
of causality to account for the individual's thing-experiences 
falls to the ground. 

We are at length in a position to discuss intelligibly the 
principle, employed rather, dogmatically by Mr. Bradley, 
that **to be real or even barely to exist must be to fall within 
sentience/' 

When we examine Mr. Bradley's argument, we find that 
it turns out to be a very cogent statement of the idealistic 
motive we have amply satisfied in the Advance of the Personal. 
''Find any piece of existence, take up anything that anyone 
could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to have 
being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient expe- 
rience." {Appearance and Reality, p. 145.) We shall call 
this the argument from content. Our position that the total 
field of the individual's experience is mental would seem to 
grant what is demanded. In our conclusion that knowledge 
about persons and things is not the presence of the object 
known, as Natural Realism supposes, we have admitted all 
that this argument from content can require. Knowledge con- 
sists of tested judgments, and these judgments are within the 
individual's experience while they are asserted to hold true 
of that which is outside the individual's experience. When 



AN EXAMINATION OF IDEALISM 153 

knowledge is taken in this more critical way, it is evident 
that Mr. Bradley's axiom loses its force as a basic and final 
proof of idealism. If cognition by means of concepts is 
treated as valid of that which does not exist in consciousness, 
it is scarcely a convincing argument against such a reference 
to say that knowledge — that which is known of reality — is 
within the mental field. 

If knowledge involves no cognitive relation between the 
mind which knows in terms of propositions and the things 
known, does it imply a unique sort of transcendence? This 
is the objection which is usually advanced against a non- 
present at ive realism, but it is based on a complete misunder- 
standing. The implicit assumption which lies back of it is 
this: the object known must be present to the knowledge. 
The transcendence view is the ghost of a presentational theory 
of knowledge. The mind which knows things and persons 
must have had a direct or an indirect commerce with them in 
order to build up the knowledge which it has, but this com- 
merce must not be confused with a relation within knowledge 
itself. Reference is achieved by the structure of the field of 
experience so that it is entirely internal and empirical. 
Empirical realism gives the foundation for critical realism. 
But we shall discuss the problem of reference or denotation 
in another chapter. 

In the present chapter, we have tried to show the weakness 
of both the formal and the empirical principles upon which 
idealism is founded. We saw that the formal principles were 
quite invalid, while the empirical principles worked against 
immediate or presentational realisms and not against a critical 
or non-presentational realism. The error involved in idealism 
turned out to be the assumption that knowledge demands the 
presence of that which is known. In the past, both idealism 
and realism have had this assumption in common, and the 
result has been an endless and rather sterile wrangling in 
regard to the nature of a supposed cognitive relation. Critical 
realism denies this assumption and thus is able to gain a more 
adequate point of view which does justice to the truth of both 
realism and idealism. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 

IN THE preceding chapter we confined ourselves very 
largely to a consideration of the formal principles upon 
which idealism is usually based. Were there such quasi- 
apriori principles, the exhaustive study of experience to find 
motives which pointed beyond a pluralism of minds seemed 
a work of supererogation. The Advance of the Personal, 
instead of being a stepping-stone to a more adequate view of 
knowledge of a realistic type, would reveal itself as a tidal 
movement engulfing all realisms. Natural Realism included. 
But our examination of idealism, far from supporting the 
claims of those epistemological principles upon which idealism 
relies, led to the suggestion of a view of knowledge which 
would include and satisfy the idealistic motives, yet grant all 
that realism could rightly demand. The result was that 
realism presented itself as formally thinkable. The question 
before us now is, accordingly, whether or not realism is forced 
upon us by the empirical characteristics of our experience. 
Idealism and realism may be considered as two hypotheses 
which seek to cover and to explain the facts. Of these two, 
idealism is in a sense the simpler, since it limits reality to the 
contents of a pluralism of minds. Hence, it is best, as a matter 
of method, to examine idealism to see whether it is sufficient 
to account for the empirical facts. 

To this program the reader may reply that idealism is 
limited to subjective idealism and that this limitation gives 
an unfair advantage to realism. ''The objective idealist,'' he 
may say, ''acknowledges the insufficiency of subjective ideal- 
ism to explain the nature of our experience. Hence, your 
method involves a begging of the question.'' This objec- 
tion is in a sense valid. Very few idealists are avowedly sub- 
jective idealists. Actually, however, the majority of them 
are fundamentally infiuenced by arguments against real- 
ism which are strictly those of subjective idealism. I refer 

154 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 155 

especially to the content argument of Mr. Bradley and to 
the corresponding endeavor of Berkeley to show that the 
external world is reducible to what is undeniably mental. 
Besides, objective idealism is virtually an attempt to satisfy 
realistic motives and instincts while admitting the validity of 
the arguments of subjective idealism. Remove these prin- 
ciples, and you draw out the support from under objective 
idealism. The main battle which realism has to wage is 
against subjective idealism. After that is through, it can turn 
its attention to the weaknesses of objective idealism with 
I confidence. 

I As the result of the Advance of the Personal, the external 
world seemed to lose the independence which it possesses for 
common sense and to shrink into a temporal continuum of my 
percepts and concepts. For other people the same meta- 
I morphosis had to be postulated. The one common world in 
i which we live and act retreated into the distance and became 
' dimmer, while in its former place was found a plurality of 
1 corresponding perceptual and conceptual experiences. In 
brief, a pluralism of minds with partially similar but unshar- 
I able contents dispossessed for reflection the common physical 
\ world open to the inspection of all. We need not recapitu- 
late the motives which led to this important reinterpretation 
j . of what appears to every man his immediate and almost trans- 
! parently certain experience. Suffice it to recall that the 
I physical world lost upon examination the immediacy which 
: it possesses for the plain man and appeared dissolved into 
j a multitude of objective, yet personal, percepts and concepts. 
I We were not, however, induced because of this hastily to 
assume the dogmatic, idealistic principle that, to be for the 
I physical world is to be perceived or, better still, to be expe- 
rienced. Such over-hasty conclusions are examples of that 
petitio principii which is too frequent in metaphysics and 
which is rightly considered a scandal. The philosopher 
should be content to advance step by step in his analysis of 
experience. The mental pluralism at which we have arrived 
by means of an examination of experience is, consequently, 
to be identified neither with idealism nor with realism. These 
terms have as yet, strictly speaking, no applicability. 



iS6 CRITICAL REALISM 

The facts which demand interpretation are essentially as 
follows: Individuals are unable to possess identical percepts 
and meanings, yet they communicate and have every reason 
to believe that they understand one another. Of course we 
must not exaggerate this insight into another's mind; it has 
its degrees and probably never is perfect. Because we were 
interested in the facts, we were able, in the Advance of 
the Personal, to face solipsism without a tremor. The 
minds of individuals do not overlap so that they have expe- 
riences literally in common, as circles which intersect have 
points in common; yet these minds do somehow communi- 
cate and influence one another both to knowledge and 
to action. Thus the facts corroborate mental pluralism 
when by this term is meant the assertion that individuals 
cannot share numerically the same percepts and meanings, 
but the facts are outraged if isolation and non-communication 
add themselves under the guise of deductions. So long as we 
are empirical, these additional assertions have no tendency to 
intervene, since they contradict the social nature of our con- 
sciousness and of our activities. They are the result of a 
too hasty assumption that, with the breakdown of the common 
world of Natural Realism, the medium of communication is 
removed. A gulf seems to yawn between minds where once 
was the friendly and subservient physical world. We must 
not forget, however, to state among our facts a continued 
belief in a physical world now known to be distinct from the 
individual's percepts and concepts. Such a physical world is 
a hypothesis, almost a demand, requiring a new view of 
knowledge to make it thinkable, yet it looms in the back- 
ground of empirical mental pluralism. 

While we have denied that solipsism is a logical deduction 
from the empirical facts which have destroyed Natural 
Realism, it will be well to consider at this point in a little more 
detail why this is so. Solipsism is a metaphysical position, 
and not an empirical fact. Furthermore, it is based on a 
limitation of an idealistic principle which makes the principle 
more dogmatic than it is in its broader form. To be is to be 
experienced, is the formal idealistic postulate directed against 
the independent existence of the external world. In order 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 157 

to arrive at solipsivSm, it is necessary to extend the reference 
to include other selves as well as nature, and then to limit 
the experiencer to himself. Being is inseparable from my 
experience. Now, no one has ever claimed that such a principle 
has a basis in intuition. It is certainly not suggested by the 
experience of the individual which, instead, is lavish in its 
recognition of being; nor can such a limitation be deduced 
from the concept itself. Consequently, solipsism as a point of 
view thinkable although seldom if ever held, is the outgrowth 
of a certainrreflective perspective. The reduction of physical 
things to a manifold of thing-experiences in the minds of 
distinct individuals is the opening wedge to the conquest of 
all presentable objects by the mind to which they appear. 
Whatever else they may be or stand for, objects are seen 
to be contents. As contents they are inseparable from the 
mind whose experiences they are. Hence, the personal, or 
(as it is frequently, though wrongly, called) the subjective, 
secures a certainty and immediacy strongly contrasted with 
that which claims to be other than a content. The breakdown 
of Natural Realism carries in its train as an inevitable result 
the tendency to link all objects to the self. They become 
dependencies of the self, satellites or planets which revolve 
round it as the dominant body. But the self can only be 
my self, since selves do not experience in common. The 
reduction of objects to contents leads inevitably to a contrast 
between the immediacy of my own field of experience and 
the aloofness of the experiences of others. These fields, each 
with its own centrality, are, by their very nature, systems 
which cannot intersect. Even a symbiosis seems unthinkable. 
Each system is a universe of finite dimensions beyond which 
there is nothingness. Such is the construction we seemed 
forced to erect. But this absolute pluralism of self-centred 
fields of experience is logically unstable and tends to break 
down as a result of an internal conflict between two points of 
view. Looked at from the point of view of objects known, I 
am only one self among others, each with its unique field of 
experience; seen from the personal or content point of view, 
these other selves forsake their independence and enter my 
field of experience as constituent parts. Thus the universe, so 



iS8 CRITICAL REALISM 

far as it can be thought by me, must enter into my conscious- 
ness. The form it takes there is, beyond question, tinged 
with the unity of which it becomes a part. Or, to put it in less 
easily misunderstood terms, the universe is for me at least 
my idea; whether it is more, as cognition claims, is a question 
which must be frankly faced no matter how absurd such a 
question may appear. To ask it does not express doubt that 
there is a universe independent of the field of my experience, 
but indicates a desire to realize how I know there is such a 
universe and what knowledge of it may mean and imply. 
The Advance of the Personal when unflinchingly followed to 
its conquest of other selves as well as the external world does 
not, however, necessitate solipsism. Our knowledge of other 
selves is seen to be content just as our knowledge of physical 
things is. The immediacy of Natural Realism is recognized 
to be valid in this case no more than in the other. All things 
which I can know must have their representative in the field 
of my experience ; but I do not see that from this the deduction 
can be made that nothing outside of the field of my experience 
can exist. Such a deduction, as we have pointed out, would 
require as premise the principle that being is limited to my 
experience. We have the right to say, then, that solipsism 
is not a valid inference from the Advance of the Personal 
and the breakdown of Natural Realism. 

Instead of taking an evidently absurd position on the 
strength of a principle which is not suggested by experience 
and which cannot be regarded as analytic, it is more whole- 
some to accept mental pluralism in the broad and qualified 
sense in which a critical experience presents it and to seek 
to discover what it involves and suggests. Such an empirical 
via media runs safely between two untenable extremes, solip- 
sism on the one hand and the absorption of the individual 
consciousness in a supposedly inclusive social consciousness 
on the other. It is noteworthy how many thinkers pass to 
one or the other of these extremes, unable, it seems, to maintain 
their equilibrium under the stress of opposing motives and, 
hence, swinging to either side instead of seeking an explana- 
tion which would satisfy both motives. It is unfortunate that 
few can distinguish clearly between a complete description of 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 159 

experience and an assertion of ultimate theory. Consciousness 
is social, yet consciousness is individual. How shall we do 
justice to both these facts at the same time? Only by a sane 
interpretation of both motives and a theory which assigns 
to each its proper place. 

We are now in a position to state the data from which we 
can rightly start. We shall assume, as a minimum which 
idealism grants, the existence of other minds of like nature 
with our own. Our belief in the existence of other selves has 
such a definite basis in the growth and the contrast implica- 
tions of our own objective or empirical self that it would require 
a tremendously strong motive to cast doubt upon it. Such 
a motive has, to my knowledge, never been advanced. Into 
this problem we shall, however, enter in extenso in a later 
chapter. What I wish to point out is, that idealism need not 
rely, as with Berkeley, on the argument from analogy for the 
existence of other selves. The characteristics and contents 
of each mind are matters of first-hand acquaintance to each. 
Each individual must reason from his own field of experience. 
While a knowledge of logic and of psychology enables him to 
describe this field more minutely and to understand better 
the processes which occur in it, the broad outlines are recog- 
nizable by all. There is, first, that domain of experience 
which is called the external world of physical things. These 
appear, disappear, appear again and are recognized; they are 
relatively the same from time to time, yet classes of them 
change at different rates and in different ways. We have 
already described this realm, and, even had we not, it is so 
familiar that further description is, at least for our present 
purpose, unnecessary. In contrast to this realm of bodies is 
the sphere of ideas, plans, memories, and imaginations, 
which are brought into touch with the physical world in judg- 
ment and in action or are held separate as merely personal and 
as having no direct bearing upon it. Such, in outline and 
viewed from within, is the experiencer's world, and this when 
taken, not passively like a lifeless picture, but as caught up 
into the activities which sustain and produce it, is for me the 
individual's mind. Concrete, you see, and quite independent 
of particular logical and psychological theories. The self, 



i6o CRITICAL REALISM 

physical things, and other selves as idea-objects, processes — 
such as thinking, willing, attending to — all these are parts of 
and processes in each individual mind. Such a mind has an 
internal structure in which processes are related to contents 
as activities to their objects. Each mind is, indeed, a micro- 
cosm and may rightly be supposed to mirror a world. More- 
over, we must never forget that each mind claims knowledge 
of other minds, and there is no adequate reason to deny that 
such knowledge is possible. Minds in this concrete sense, then, 
furnish the justified basis on which philosophy must explain 
experience. 

While the foregoing data give the brightly illuminated centre 
from which we must work gradually outwards, certain demands 
and constructions characteristic of these minds point out 
beyond the definite to what is problematic and, as it were, 
marginal. My mind claims a knowledge of an external, 
impersonal world in which I live and move and have my 
being and by means of which I communicate with my fellows. 
It asserts that it is somehow most intimately connected with 
a part of this world which it calls its body, and that, by means 
of this body, it exerts influence upon this environing world 
and makes it relatively subservient to its purposes. Further- 
more, it acknowledges that its experiences come and go 
while this environing world, which it calls nature, is far more 
enduring. These constructions and beliefs present reflection 
with problems whose historic insistence should warn against 
a too facile treatment. The sufficiency or insufficiency of ideal- 
ism must be adjudged with reference to the satisfaction which 
it is able to accord these beliefs and constructions. It may 
be that, if we examine more reflectively the tested basis 
upon which philosophy counts, viz., mental pluralism, we may ' 
discover a clue to guide us in dealing with these elusive and 
tantalizing problems. 

Our basis secured, we wish to show now that mental 
pluralism as a theory is unable to answer certain fundamental 
questions which it itself evokes. In other words, the 
characteristics of experience force us beyond idealism as 
insufficient and suggest a realism of a more critical character 
than Natural Realism as alone satisfactory. It is true that 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM i6i 

objective idealism seeks to enter the breach and hold the 
day for idealism. However, the weakness which it has ex- 
hibited on the formal side robs it of strength and attractive- 
ness. It is too evidently unempirical and a pis aller to awaken 
the allegiance of the modern thinker trained in science. More- 
over, it fails miserably whenever it is asked to solve a con- 
crete problem like that of the mind-body relation. It moves 
too much in the region of abstractions, such as ''experience- 
in-general," to be able to appreciate and to state in rugged 
and meaningful terms a problem which always threatensi a 
dualism. By this statement I do not mean that thinkers 
trained in objective idealism may not assist in the solution 
of the problem, but that their allegiance to the standpoint 
of the whole, when this whole is stated in terms of mind, un- 
avoidably leads to the suggestion that the body is more or 
less appearance. If the finite mind be also considered appear- 
ance from the view-point of the whole, matters are not much 
improved. The way in which we relate two appearances 
cannot be regarded as seriously as the problems of how two 
realities are related. The keen edge is taken from the 
problem; it is now considered methodological in character. 
But more of this later, when this particular problem comes 
up for analysis and solution. 

The thinker who accepts the qualified form of mental 
pluralism which the Advance of the Personal has forced upon 
us must cope with several difficult but extremely suggestive 
problems. These arise so naturally that only mental con- 
fusion or a will not to see them can keep them down. The 
reason why they have been kept in the background and their 
significance for metaphysics unrealized is — I am convinced of 
it — that the analysis which gives the setting for metaphysics 
has been vague and inadequate. Metaphysicians have struck 
out blindly under the urgency of general motives, as a swimmer 
thrown overboard on a dark night strikes out gaspingly 
in any direction in his blind search for land. Idealism has 
only too often been satisfied with the promotion of experience 
to the position of an ultimate term without demanding whose 
experience is in question. Now, such a vagueness in the 
statement of the terms involved inevitably brought as a 



i62 CRITICAL REALISM 

consequence vagueness and lack of localization in the questions 
asked. Take Kant, for instance. Recent investigation seems 
to prove that, in his refutation of idealism, he really affirms 
that bodies in space are things-in- themselves. (C/. Prichard, 
Kant's Theory of Knowledge ^ p. 321.) This affirmation, 
however, contradicts his own characteristic position. Again, 
his dualistic theory of knowledge springs from the absence 
of an empirical analysis of actual experience. Yet Kant 
sinned less than the traditional Continental philosophy; his 
orientation is more assured, more a matter for reflection. 
Once more, HegeFs neglect of the individual as the unit of 
experience was undoubtedly the cause of his panlogism and 
of that ''unearthly ballet of bloodless categories'' of which a 
certain writer speaks. The movements in philosophy of 
recent years consist largely in an attempt at an empirical 
orientation which will avoid the pitfalls of psychologism. 
What characterizes them in the main is a reaction against 
experience-in-general and against an absolute consciousness 
as the beginning from which philosophy must work. The 
position that holds consciousness or experience to be social, 
which we have already criticised, is an advance from this 
standpoint over the experience-in-general of many writers. 
Yet the type of pragmatism which advocates social experience 
as the ultimate basis fails, as we shall see, for that very reason 
to ask and answer sharply the problems which are persistent 
and permanent. In brief, incomplete analysis carries with it 
blindness to the very facts which have the power to suggest 
pregnant inquiries and explanatory hypotheses. The proper 
orientation is over half the battle. Idealism has never been 
desirous enough of problems. Confident of formal principles 
like esse est percipi and non-contradiction, it has tended to slur 
over problems rather than eagerly to welcome them. Having 
removed the support of these principles in a preceding chapter, 
it will give us peculiar pleasure to bring forward the difficulties 
which confront mental pluralism. 

There are seven main questions with which mental pluralism 
must reckon. Under their stimulus, mental pluralism will 
lose its ultimacy and will suggest supplementations in accord- 
ance with principles already implicitly contained in itself; it 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 163 

will reveal itself in its true light as a point of departure. 
The first problem which challenges the finality of mental 
pluralism may be stated as follows : Within the field of each 
individual's experience there arises the distinction between 
the physical and the psychical. Why is this? Is it simply^ 
a fact which we must admit, but which we cannot explain; or 
does it rest upon and reproduce a difference in reality which 
idealism as such cannot grant? Let us look a little more 
closely at this contrast. The outer sphere of the individuars 
field of experience consists of bodies in relation to one another. 
These are adjudged common and more or less permanent 
and in direct or indirect relation to the individual's body. In 
contrast to this domain is the psychical sphere which is 
personal and transitory. It seems to fiow alongside of the 
permanent sphere and live largely as a changing atmosphere 
of it. Thus we have ideas of things, memories of things, 
imaginations based on things, etc. These are transient, while 
the outer domain of which they are satellites is considered 
independent and stable. There are several species of the 
genus psychical, and these are united by their common contrast 
to the physical realm. There are processes like reasoning, 
acts like attention, ''true" ideas, ''false" ideas, dreams, 
sensations, feelings, plans, etc. Some of these are "objective" ; 
some are "subjective," as mental acts or attitudes are in 
contrast to their objects; some are subjective, as deposed 
meanings are in contradistinction to accepted theories; 
others are subjective, as things admittedly mental are in 
contrast to that which is physical. But all are felt to belong 
to the inner world, and all are transitory. When we come 
to examine these two spheres, the physical and the psychical, 
we find that one is as immediate as the other, yet they are 
thought of as existentially distinct. The preposition "of" in 
the phrase, "idea of," is not symbolic of any actual relation, 
but, instead, of a distinction between two spheres with different 
characteristics. Whatever relatedness seems to overarch this 
separateness is due to the fact that, in spite of the accepted 
existential distinctness of the two spheres, they nevertheless 
coexist in the field of the individual's experience. Is not the 
presence of this existential contrast within the individual's 



i64 CRITICAL REALISM 

experience curious? More curious still would it be had it no 
symbolic significance. Again, why does the psychical tend to 
engulf the whole of the individual's experience at the same 
time that it recognizes its relativity to the physical? 

There have of late been attempts to explain the distinction 
between the physical and the psychical as one of context. 
Probably William James deserves more credit than any other 
one individual for the opening up of this point of view. His 
conclusion is that ''thoughts in the concrete are made of the 
same stuff as things are.'' The primal reality is ''pure" 
experience, and each bit of pure experience may be, and usually 
is, taken in two contexts ; in one context it is the physical object, 
in the other it is the mental. "The one self -identical thing 
has so many relations to the rest of experience that you can 
take it in disparate systems of association and treat it as 
belonging with opposite contexts. In one of these contexts 
it is your "field of consciousness," in another it is "the room 
in which you sit" ; and it enters both contexts in its wholeness, 
giving no pretext for being said to attach itself to conscious- 
ness by one of its parts or aspects and to outer reality by 
another." (James, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" Journal oj 
Philosophy, etc., Vol. I, p. 477.) It is evident that our own 
position agrees with that of James on many points, but it 
differs from it on other — and fundamental — points. In the 
first place, we agree that, when an object is considered physical, 
it has a context in the outer sphere quite different from that 
which it would have were it considered psychical. But the 
vital question is this : Does it have these associates because it 
is assigned to the outer sphere, or is it assigned to the outer 
sphere because it has these associates ? In other words, is not 
the matter of associates a consequence of something more 
fundamental? We have seen reason to believe that the 
dualism of Natural Realism is as primitive a distinction as we 
possess. Even here, however, the physical world stands as a 
stable domain shot through with characteristic meanings, 
many of which seem to have a basis in organic reactions. To 
exist in it involves independence, commonness, and describable 
causal and spatial relations. The genesis of these meanings 
can be traced with more or less certainty to motives within 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 165 

experience. To do this appreciatively, yet critically, so that 
these meanings might not be misunderstood, has been an 
essential part of our task. As a consequence, we feel impelled 
to deny what James seems to imply — that the field of the 
individual's experience presents itself at first as ''pure" 
experience, as ''plain, unqualified actuality or existence, a 
simple that.'' What we do seem obliged to admit is, that an 
object of reflection may be held between the outer and the 
inner sphere and temporarily assigned to neither. Both, as it 
were, claim it, but neither has as yet had its claim acknowledged 
as valid. Unless it remain in this neutral state — like Buri- 
dan's ass — indefinitely, it falls, as the result of reflection, into 
one or other of the domains into which it naturally fits. It is 
in this way that judgment sustains and increases our world. 
But we must never forget that for us judgment works within 
a world already relatively organized. By means of an analytic 
study of the characteristics of the field of experience we can 
penetrate to the forces and motives which have produced this 
organization, but it is impossible to possess a "pure' 'experience 
uninfluenced by at least implicit relations to the established 
order. It is required of all objects that they give allegiance 
as soon as possible. There is seldom, if ever, any hesitancy 
on the part of perceptual objects. 

Let us examine the physical realm a little more closely. 
Berkeley tried to differentiate "ideas" from images by refer- 
ence to the fact that they do not seem to be under our control 
as images are. Hume emphasized a difference in vividness 
between impressions and thoughts. Perhaps spatial relation 
to our body and a disposition, more or less felt, to react may be 
added to the above-mentioned differentiae of the physical. 
While Berkeley was inclined to consider "ideas" passive in 
themselves, it cannot be doubted that we usually connect them 
with that which follows and judge them to be "causally" 
active. Real fire burns; mental fire does not. There can be 
no doubt, then, that there is ample empirical foundation for 
the distinction between the physical and the psychical. The 
question is : What does it signify ? To make it merely a matter 
of context seems absurd. What we do is to connect the vivid- 
ness of the physical with the stimulation of our sense-organs, 

12 



k 



i66 CRITICAL REALISM 

our lack of control of things with their independence, our 
tendency to react towards them with their equal reality and 
their influence upon us for weal or woe, their activity with 
processes in the world of which we are a part. In short, this 
distinction between the physical and the psychical is inter- 
preted naturally in realistic terms. What concrete explanation 
has idealism to offer? 

To conclude this problem. The physical realm claims 
to be independent of the mind, and there are valid motives 
which differentiate it from the psychical. These motives 
must secure satisfaction in any adequate philosophy, and 
idealism is unable to offer it. 

The second problem which challenges the finality of mental 
pluralism is this : How is interpersonal intercourse possible ? 
That it exists is admitted; but how shall we account for it? 
The pressure of this question was not realized by Berkeley. 
His main effort was directed to the disproof of matter, and 
after this was done to his own satisfaction — and, we may 
add, to the satisfaction of all those who realize what he meant 
by matter — his intellectual interest waned. Consequently, 
we find an almost total neglect of the problem of social knowl- 
edge. Our belief in other selves is accounted for by the 
argument from analogy. ''The knowledge I have of other 
spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; 
but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to 
agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomi- 
tant signs.'' (Cy. Principles of Human Knowledge, sec. 145; 
cf, also sees. 147-8.) Berkeley seems, however, to assume 
that the individual has control over the motion of the 
limbs of his body, but asserts that such a motion cannot 
affect another unless God so will it. {Ibid. sees. 146-7.) He 
is forced to admit, in other words, that human beings are con- 
cerned with the producing of some changes in nature. We are 
face to face here with the mind-body problem, which he solves 
so facilely in the second dialogue between Hylas and Philonous. 
Surely if the brain is in the mind, the body must be, and what 
can the production of motions in the body by the will mean? 
Intercourse of any moment depends upon language, and this 
upon the production of motions in the throat. The conclusion 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 167 

we must draw is evident. Either God mediates all communica- 
tion from mind to mind directly, or he does so upon the produc- 
tion of motions in bodies which are as real as the individual 
minds, but under their control. In either case, mental pluralism 
goes by the board; God does what we ordinarily suppose the 
physical world to do. The question comes to be, accordingly, 
whether the hypothesis of an active spirit upon whom we 
depend for our percepts and for our intercourse with others 
is preferable to our natural assumption that activities occur 
in nature and are communicated by the body to the mind. 
I think every one will agree that the burden of proof rests on 
the idealistic realist. And it is not sufficient to show the absurd- 
ity of a crudely representative view of knowledge about the 
physical world or to point out the meaninglessness of mere 
being or to convince us of the inadequacy of inert matter. He 
who regards it as sufficient is guilty of the fallacy of ignoratio 
elenchi in that he assumes as disproved what has simply not 
been brought into the argument. Also, he is himself open 
to the tu quoque of his opponent. We are all aware that 
Berkeley had his nemesis in Hume, who speaks with the 
voice of experience. {Cf. An Enquiry Concerning Human 
Understanding, p. 75, Open Court edition.) We must first 
prove that God exists before we have the possible further right 
to account for human intercourse by means of his mediating 
activity. Now, Berkeley is honest enough on the whole 
not to resort to intuition. We do not perceive God, but argue 
to his existence by analogy. Just as we are led to believe in 
the existence of our fellow men by the nature and conduct of a 
certain collection of ideas, so we are forced to assert the being 
of God from our perception of nature as a whole. But it is, 
I think, generally agreed that idealism cannot resort to the 
argument from analogy. Hence, Berkeley is in sad plight. 
His is not a living hypothesis which has grown out of concrete 
experience, but a theory motived by theological tradition. 
''We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which bodies 
operate on each other. Their force or energy is entirely incom- 
prehensible. But are we not equally ignorant of the manner or 
force by which a mind, even the supreme mind, operates either 
on itself or on body?" These words of Hume, when taken 



i68 CRITICAL REALISM 

with a criticism of the argument from analogy, constitute 
the best rejoinder to the constructive side of Berkeley's 
teaching. 

We have entered into such detail in our criticism of Berkeley 
in order to show two things: First, that such a keen thinker 
as he is admitted to be starts from mental pluralism and feels 
the need to supplement it with that which can serve as a 
realistic connective tissue; second, that his supplementation 
cannot be considered satisfactory. If nothing better than 
this can be done, and if, furthermore, metaphysics wishes to be 
considered a science, it is far preferable to rest with Hume 
in an unexplained mental pluralism. 

But idealism has still another arrow in its quiver, namely, 
monadism. Probably the best contemporary discussion of 
pluralism from this standpoint is to be found in the last 
series of Gifford lectures delivered by James Ward. Let us 
briefly examine his position. 

''For modern pluralism the universe is the totality of 
monads really interacting; and this is one fact. The plurality 
implies this unity and this unity implies the plurality.'' In 
other words. Ward recognizes, as we have recognized, that the 
empirical facts force upon us a belief in communication. 
What we have called mental pluralism is qualified from the 
first by this admission. The question, consequently, is not 
whether there be a unity, but what sort of a unity is suggested 
by the facts. Now it is evident that the monads themselves 
cannot be unified if this unification contradicts their monadic 
characteristics. To assert that they must be a unity either 
involves this inner contradiction or else it is a reassertion of 
the problem. The concrete unity which must be explained is 
not given by logic, but by experience. Sentient and conative 
beings can cooperate and do have the capacity to communicate 
with one another, which this cooperation involves. Upon this 
sort of concrete unity society and civilization have been erected. 
Now this sort of unity does not involve either literal contact or 
transeunt activity between the monads, nor can it necessitate, 
as so many have carelessly thought, a literal participation in 
the same experiences. If such were the case, pluralism would 
be outraged. So far, then, Lotze would seem to have been 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 169 

warranted in his belief that the *' sympathetic rapport'' which 
exists between individuals is an ''inexhaustible wonder." 
But, as Ward rightly indicates, this rapport covers no contra- 
diction; it is only a fact to be explained. The problem, then, 
comes to be somewhat as follows : Shall we take refuge with 
Berkeley in a theism which is essentially unthinkable? or 
shall we insist on a rapport between individuals, on what 
might be called an intermonadic telepathy? or shall we seek 
to connect individuals, as common sense and science do in 
the main, by means of their bodies and the fundamental 
continuity of the physical world? We have already given 
our reasons for not regarding theism as a satisfactory hypothesis 
with which to supplement mental pluralism. Like preestab- 
lished harmony, it is a counsel of despair whose supposed 
thinkableness rests more in feeling than in thought. As for 
the second possibility, it amounts to little more than an 
assertion that mental pluralism may be cosmologically ultimate 
but that it is not cognitively ultimate; human monads have 
windows. But the real problem to-day is not whether or not 
monads have windows, but What kind of windows have they? 
And here the only basis for serious suggestions is the empirical 
facts. Now, leaving aside the question whether telepathy is 
thinkable, there still remains the more matter-of-fact inquiry 
as to whether cases of it have been proved, and the still more 
matter-of-fact investigation which seeks to ascertain whether 
our experience suggests telepathy or some more indirect and 
mediate basis as an explanation of the fact of communication 
between minds. There can be, I think, only one answer to 
this inquiry. Communication is by means of the body and is 
therefore indirect. Cognition at a distance, without a medium, 
is even less indicated by our experience than action at a 
distance. We shall see that other problems support this 
contention. In this contention we have the support of those 
''stuff" idealists, the panpsychists. Ward, in his present 
work. Strong, Paulsen, Stout, and others accept the reality of 
the body as consisting of more than the individual's con- 
sciousness. Now panpsychism is a half-way house between 
subjective idealism and some more critical form of realism 
than Natural Realism. For it the external world is real, but 



I70 CRITICAL REALISM 

we can only know it by analogy; the world of nature as wc 
construct it is entirely phenomenal and does not contain real 
knowledge. Be this as it may, for the present, our examination 
of the second problem — How is interpersonal intercourse 
possible? — has led us to realize with increasing clearness the 
insufficiency of mental pluralism. There must be a connective 
tissue in which these fields of experience act and have their 
being. 

The third problem which confronts mental pluralism may 
be stated as follows: There exists an evident correspondence 
between my field of experience and those of other persons when 
we are in what we call the same situation. This corre- 
spondence is so great that it leads us ordinarily to believe that 
the same things axe somehow presented to us. Even though 
we allow for the conventionalizing influence of social motives, 
there remains an original presentational correspondence that 
demands explanation. Why, for instance, do the students in 
a ''quiz section" in philosophy have comparable desk-expe- 
riences so that you can analyze your desk-experiences and find 
that they agree with your analysis in the main ? Point to the 
desk and they also see it; rap sharply upon it and they also 
hear a sound; move it and it moves simultaneously for them. 
Or, take the case of two travelers visiting a picture-gallery. 
They will enter at the same door, go up two flights of stairs, 
turn to the. left and walk into a room on the description of 
which they will agree, and they will note paintings by old 
masters hung on corresponding parts of the wall, and so on. 
Why is this? The human mind is not satisfied to accept this 
constant perceptual correspondence as simply a remarkable 
fact. There must be a reason for it. Now, mental pluralism 
does not contain in itself that which can account for this 
agreement. Thing-experiences are given to the individual, 
not in the sense that he is absolutely passive in respect to them, 
but in the sense that they are not under his control as are his 
ideas, and that their content and relations are not deducible 
from any empirical, personal source. The recognition of this 
fact led Berkeley to his postulation of an active Spirit who 
produces these thing-experiences in finite souls ; it moved Kant 
to his postulation of things-in-themselves — for Kant, however, 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 171 

the finite soul contributes much that certainly does not seem 
under our control; it led Fichte to his postulation of the 
Absolute Ego; it motivates the emphasis which Bosanquet 
and thinkers of similar tendencies put on the contact with 
Reality in immediate experience. There must be a unity or 
connectedness as basic as the pluralism which reflection forces 
upon us. The insufficiency of mental pluralism stares us in the 
face. Practically all thinkers have agreed upon this con- 
clusion ; the question has been partly one of procedure, partly 
one of epistemological basis. With regard to the first, there is 
undoubtedly an increasingly strong current towards empiri- 
cism and induction. If a unity there be, we must work up 
towards it and not down from it. The epistemological aspect 
is, again, fundamental. A convinced idealist inevitably ends 
in theism or in absolutism. No better illustrations of this 
principle could be desired than Ward, Bradley, and Bosanquet. 
A convinced realist is more apt to seek the desired ground for 
the correspondence between the worlds of individuals in the 
reinterpretation of our knowledge about nature. However 
this may be, the search for a ground to account for the 
correspondence between the fields of experience bears witness 
to the acknowledged insufficiency of mental pluralism. 

The fourth problem which mental pluralism must face is 
closely allied to the preceding one. It points in the same 
direction to an independent ground which controls the individ- 
ual's experience; yet it concerns noteworthy characteristics of 
the individual's field of experience which seem to demand 
explanation. The problem may be stated as follows: Why 
do physical things appear in the perceptual field in the order, 
spatial and temporal, in which they do appear? Both science 
and common sense are convinced that this order is not hap- 
hazard, that it has a basis in an environment independent 
of the individual. So far as these standpoints are realistic, 
they naturally assign this control-basis to nature as a system 
of physical things which stimulate the organism and thus 
occasion the orderly succession of experiences. But natural 
realism has broken down, and this explanation itself requires 
critical examination. What it witnesses to is, however, clear. 
There is a spatial and temporal uniformity in the perceptual 



172 CRITICAL REALISM 

field which the human mind is not satisfied to accept simply 
as given fact which demands no explanation. Unable to 
account for it in terms of its own creativeness, and unwilling 
to leave it unexplained when Natural Realism breaks down 
under the stress of unavoidable conflicts, the mind resorts 
first to the distinction between appearance and reality and 
then to the contrast between the physical world as it is in 
itself and the percepts which it occasions in percipient agents. 
In both stages it holds to a ground, and to one not entirely 
alien to the objects present in consciousness. It should be 
noted that the previous problems and the present problem all 
work in the same direction. They thus reenforce each other 
and make the demand for a realistic ground to explain our 
physical- world experience almost irresistible. It is note- 
worthy that Berkeley accepts without question this demand 
for a ground, while he refuses to acknowledge that we can 
gain valid information about it by means of reflection on our 
immediate experience; yet only after he has disposed of this 
possibility to his own satisfaction, does he feel assured of his 
own spiritualistic construction. 

I wish now to take up for consideration the relative inde- 
pendence of the last two realistic motives. Many thinkers 
of the present day are so obsessed by the social atmosphere 
in which our experience is formed that they are inclined to do 
scant justice to motives within the individual's experience. 
I have heard philosophers gravely assert that a child's expe- 
rience of the physical world is secondary to, and somehow 
mediated by, his relations to other selves. Such an assertion 
seems to me absurd and not likely to be made by one who has 
observed children closely. A very young child, only two or 
three months old, gazes with interest upon the passing show 
of nature when he is taken for a walk. To him persons are 
but other things; but because of his inherited instincts and 
the part persons play in the satisfaction of his wants, he finds 
persons more interesting. Let us admit, then, to the full, the 
assistance rendered by interpersonal intercourse in the devel- 
opment of consciousness of the self and in the solidifying and 
extending of the physical world; it still does not follow that 
things, so far as they are objective, are simply transsubjective. 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 173 

The truer analysis regards transsubjectivity as merely a 
deepening and intensifying of that objectivity which motives 
in the individual's experience are themselves able to bring to 
birth. Communication and cooperation contain, as it were, 
harmoniously superposable motives which continue this 
objectivity and orientate it in relation to all. This further 
development consists more in a change of perspective than 
in a change in content, and might be likened to the effect 
produced by a stereoscope. We are able to stand back from 
nature and view it impersonally. The transsubjective object 
is, however, only the perceptual object which has reached the 
adult stage under the ever more effective tutelage of inter- 
personal relations ; there is and can be no temporal and no 
existential separation. If this analysis be true, it is erroneous 
to account for the independence of the transsubjective object 
on the ground that it is based on a fallacy. Ordinary thought, 
says Ward, does not raise Kant's question : For what conscious- 
ness is the transsubjective object an object? ''It proceeds, 
rather, in this wise. Regarding the sun as independent of L 
and M and N, severally, it concludes that it is and remains an 
object independently of them all collectively. Such reasoning 
is about on a par with maintaining that the British House of 
Commons is an estate of the realm independent of each 
individual member, and that, therefore, it might be addressed, 
from the throne, for instance, even if there were no members." 
We have seen reason to believe that Ward is wrong in his 
analysis. The independence of the transsubjective object 
but develops and continues that which the more distinctly 
perceptual object or thing already possesses. What the 
individual sees from the first is, implicitly at least, the sun. 
Moreover, it is very doubtful whether the conditions for a 
fallacy of composition are to be found in this problem. Is the 
transsubjective object thought of as related to individuals in 
their collective aspect? The dualism of common sense is not 
produced by social reference, but merely strengthened thereby. 
It is so easy to adopt an extreme position and so difficult 
to do impartial justice to contemporaneous yet logically sepa- 
rable factors that the attitude taken by those thinkers who 
have rediscovered the social moment in our physical-world 



174 CRITICAL REALISM 

experience is natural and excusable. Psychology and logic 
were, until lately, far too individualistic. The political, 
ethical, and economic individualisms of the eighteenth century 
made their influence felt in these disciplines to a degree little 
suspected at the time. While it is true that the individual 
alone judges and the individual alone has experiences, — a 
statement that our study of the Advance of the Personal has 
justified, — it is the reverse of the truth to assert that the 
individual is not fundamentally influenced in these judgments 
and experiences by interpersonal intercourse. What the 
thinker must do is to strike a balance between the social and 
individual factors in the experience of the individual. To do 
this by comparing a child's field of experience with an adult's, 
as if the difference could be assigned to the social factor, is, 
on the face of it, unjust; yet the advocates of the social factor 
have suggested such a comparison. Thus Royce, one of the 
pioneers in the rehabilitation of the social, does not deny that 
the child ''while its perceptive consciousness is slowly clearing 
gets a notion of something that has many important elements 
in common with what you and I call our external world." 
But he tends to minimize these elements and the development 
which might be attained apart from the presence of the social 
moment. Mingled almost inextricably with this tendency, 
and partly the cause of it, is the belief that ''consciousness of 
others antedates consciousness of self — or, at least, this is 
nearer the truth than the reverse order." {The World and 
the Individual, p. 170, second series.) 

Consciousness of self and consciousness of others are, 
however, really correlatives; and certainly consciousness of 
the external world in some form is as primitive as — probably 
more primitive than — either. Professor Royce's thesis finally 
simmers down to this : "while the factor furnished by personal 
verification by private experience of the facts of perception, 
plays an unquestionable and very important part in the 
formation of our general conception of external reality, it is, 
at least, very probable that the social factor plays a still 
larger part, not only, as just pointed out, in supplying us with 
a notion of what individual facts the external world contains, 
but also in determining our very fundamental notion itself 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 175 

of what we now mean by externality." (Philosophical Review, 
Vol. Ill, p. 515.) This element which the social factor adds is 
what we have called commonness. Along with this goes an 
increased determinateness due to description and measurement. 
Granted the validity of this analysis in the main, there still 
rises in our mind the question : Does the social factor produce 
a very fundamental change in man's attitude to the physical 
world? I am strongly inclined to say that it does not, that 
commonness and determinateness are additional qualifications 
surrounding the central core of independence, and that this 
central core of independence is explicable only in terms of 
motives characteristic of the individuars field of experience. 
Commonness and determinateness are, as it were, embroidery 
on the basic distinction within the individual's experience 
between the physical and the psychical. They furnish tests 

' of that which claims to be a physical object but are incapable of 
offering an explanation of the distinction itself. This is, 
of course, the point at issue, since everyone to-day would admit 
that the individual's knowledge of the particular objects to 

' be found in the physical world is socially mediated. Our 
conclusion is, accordingly, that the social factors reenforce 
and clarify distinctions which must have their origin in 
characteristics of the individual's experience. To believe 
otherwise is to forget that society is created by individuals 
and that these, therefore, must have capacities of an order 
equal to their task. The motives developed by interpersonal 
intercourse do not compete with, but, instead, support and 
harmonize with the native structure of experience. 

An example of this support will do to close this discussion 
of the relative independence of the last two motives, critical 
of mental pluralism. We have maintained that the distinction 
between the physical and the psychical and the independence 
of the individual which is assigned to the former are explic- 
able in terms of the individual's experience. But reflection, 
working critically within the individual's natural outlook, is 
forced to develop the additional contrast between the physical 
object and its appearance to a percipient. Even this does not 
furnish a resting-place, however; and analysis leads on to the 
conception that the physical object is possibly only a synthesis 



176 CRITICAL REALISM 

of sensations, ideas, and meanings. But these elements are 
avowedly personal and cannot be shared, whereas the object is 
somehow common. In this manner, the social factor comes to 
the rescue of the physical object and defends it with varying 
success against the assaults of idealistic motives. The strength 
of this defense consists largely in the fact that it sets subjective 
idealism a problem which it, in its turn, is unable to answer. 
Idealism on the defensive is never as confident and dogmatic 
as idealism on the offensive. The social factor first confirms 
the natural realism of the individual and then tenaciously 
supports it when under attack. But this role is altogether 
different from that assigned to it by Ward, who makes it the 
creator of dualism. 

A fifth problem is closely connected with those which have 
preceded, yet it has sufficient distinctness to deserve a separate 
treatment. Natural Realism concedes a permanence to physi- 
cal things which thing-experiences, to which idealism is forced 
to reduce them, cannot possess. Now such a view, how- 
ever it may have arisen, certainly enables us to organize our 
experience in a way that would otherwise be impossible. 
Moreover, it empowers us to escape the belief that things are 
created in such a way as to give us the impression that they 
are permanent, or, to express it more accurately, that things 
arise apparently ex nihilo in such an order and relation as to 
give us that impression. It is interesting in this connection 
to notice that Berkeley felt the force of this demand that things 
be somehow permanent, and endeavored to satisfy it. ' ' Ideas ' ' 
have an existence distinct from being perceived by me. 
{Three Dialogues, p. 64, Open Court edition.) Again and 
again, he emphasizes the fact that ideas are independent of 
the individual's mind. Yet they must exist in some mind. 
This finally adequate mind can be no other than God's. 
(''Sensible things do really exist; and if they really exist, they 
are necessarily perceived by an infinite mind : therefore there is 
an infinite mind, or God." Ihid,, p. 65.) So far as the individ- 
ual knower is concerned, the outlook is decidedly realistic. 
But this attempt to throw a sop to the Cerberus of realism 
is little more than a confession of weakness ; for ideas are not 
and cannot be the same for distinct individuals. Our study 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 177 

of the Advance of the Personal has surely demonstrated this 
beyond the possibility of doubt. Whose idea shall we consider 
really existent? The suggestion of the difficulty is enough. 
Ideas are not independent of the selective purposes and past 
experiences of the individual; and to regard the individual as 
a passive reflector of the divine ideas is most assuredly to sin 
against what both logic and psychology have taught us. 
Hence, there are as many ideas as individuals (be they divine 
or human) to perceive them. And I see no way of escape from 
this difficulty that is at all satisfactory for the idealist. To 
say that our ideas are selections from the single idea in God's 
mind involves the difficulty which, in a less theological context, 
we saw confronted M. Bergson. Communication reveals the 
fact that the differences between the corresponding ideas of 
percipients are more fundamental than the word ''selection" 
indicates. Ideas can be best understood as functions of many 
factors working causally together. What, then, becomes of the 
identity of the idea upon which its permanence and inde- 
pendence of finite minds depend ? It is the idea in the divine 
mind, which alone can be identical and permanent. But we 
are limited to the sensible existences which present themselves 
to our senses. It is from their independence of the individual 
that Berkeley argues to the infinite mind. Thus the ground 
is taken from under his feet by the Advance of the Personal. 
Berkeley raised the question of identity, although he did not 
see its full significance. Hylas asks (p. 114) whether it does 
not follow, from the principles advocated by Philonous, ''that 
no two can see the same thing.'' There is then given a disser- 
tation on identity which cannot be freed from the criticism 
that it is question-begging. He appeals to the prejudice of 
common sense. This is playing fast and loose with a ven- 
geance. Again, he assumes that individuals may be ' ^affected in 
like sort by their senses" and have uniform experiences. In 
spite of all, he is forced to appeal to an archetype in the 
infinite mind» Thus the gain of Berkeley over Locke turns out 
to be minimal. In the place of Locke's acceptance of the 
scientific view of perception as involving the stimulation of 
the sense-organs, we have the postulation of the creative 
activity of an infinite spirit and the further problem of the 



178 CRITICAL REALISM 

relation of the permanent ideas to the Divine Mind and to 
the sensible objects which we perceive. At the best, the only- 
thing permanent for us is the will of this infinite spirit. Hence, 
Berkeley does not succeed in giving permanence to things, but 
only to the cause of things. It is undeniable, therefore, that 
Berkeley's construction is entirely hypothetical and bears 
witness to the need for a realistic ground. Its strength is 
negative rather than positive. 

The fifth problem which confronts mental pluralism may 
be stated as follows : How can the appearance and disappear- 
ance of these minds be explained? And let us not forget that, 1 1 
for us, minds do not mean souls or metaphysical entities*' 
somehow lying back of consciousness, like hidden springs 
whose source and nature we cannot know. The word denotes 
the ever-changing fields of experience whose unity we signify 
by a ''my.'' These minds recognize their temporal char- 
acter; they know as certainly as they know anything that 
they had beginning in time. Memory carries each back to a 
period when the field of experience was far simpler; and social 
relations, testimony, and analogy convince the individual 
that he was born a few years back of this ultimate reach of his 
memory. Again, we have adequate reason to believe that 
this stream of consciousness which we call the mind is in 
danger of ceasing. Shall we admit, then, that these minds 
have an absolute origin, or shall we agree to accept a pre- 
existence for them? The empirical facts point toward an 
absolute beginning of each mind, but accept in mental heredity 
a realistic basis or ground which underarches each mind and 
gives it a continuity with minds which have existed in the 
past. Mental heredity is, however, merely a name for this 
continuity and does not explain it. Still there can be little 
doubt that there is such a basic continuity. Without it, 
history would be meaningless and parentage would lose its 
deeper implications. On the other hand, such a continuity is 
not a fact within any one of these minds. Accordingly, mental 
pluralism has to choose between preexistence and inexplicable 
absolute beginnings. But this is to offer it the horns of a 
dilemma. To choose preexistence is to deny heredity and 
the logical relations it involves; to choose absolute beginnings 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 179 

is to incur the enmity 01 our reason, which demands a ground 
for all things. A will-o'-the-wisp world has no uniformity, 
and in it we might well expect our ancestors to appear and 
become our pupils. I do not see how mental pluralism as 
such can escape this dilemma. Thus the fifth problem, also, 
points to a realistic ground for experience. 

Reflection upon the preceding problem caimot fail to 
carry the attention to one peculiarity of the appearance and 
disappearance of minds. Alw^ays, what we call the individual's 
body is associated with these events. Biology informs us that 
the continuity which we posit in the conception of mental 
heredity can be at least partly assured by referring it to the 
actual continuity of the child's organism with the organisms 
of his ancestors. It may be replied that biology can deal 
only with physical continuities and resemblances. In a 
certain sense, such an objection has truth on its side. Mental 
resemblances can be investigated and be found to accompany 
physical resemblances, but a real connection between the two 
cannot be proved by biology. All that such an empirical 
investigation conducted by biology and by psychology can do, 
is to suggest a real connection. As we shall see, such a sug- 
gestion in this genetic field reenforces a similar one in regard 
to the unity of mind and body in the individual himself. 
But we have dealt so far only with the appearance of minds 
upon the world's stage; their exit, likewise, seems inseparably 
bound up with the fortunes of the body. Everyone has the 
general inform.ation which leads to this conclusion, and 
further details can readily be found in the study of insanity and 
of the pathology of the brain. We may say, then, without 
risk of contradiction that a deeper study of the last question 
that we posed to mental pluralism leads to another problem, 
namely. What is the significance of the distinction between 
the mind and the body, which grows up inevitably in the 
individual's experience? What meaning can this distinction 
possibly have for mental pluralism? 

We have already noted the solution which Berkeley 
offers for this problem. If the brain be considered a substance 
independent of perception, it is inconceivable, and falls under 
the condemnation meted out to matter. Hence, the brain 



i8o CRITICAL REALISM 

is, for me, only a clUwSter of sensations or, better yet, of images. 
But these exist only in my mind; therefore, my brain exists 
only in my mind and cannot support it or mediate my knowl- 
edge of an external world. (''Besides spirits, all that we 
know or conceive are our own ideas. When, therefore, you 
say all ideas are occasioned by impressions in the brain, do 
you conceive this brain or no? If you do, then you talk of 
ideas imprinted in an idea causing that same idea, which is 
absurd. If you do not conceive it, you talk unintelligibly, 
instead of forming a reasonable hypothesis.'' Second Dia- 
logue, p. 6i, Open Court edition.) In short, for idealism, 
the body, like any other physical thing, becomes my idea. 
Berkeley is eminently logical. But we have also noticed 
the difficulty into which this reduction of the body to the 
individual's idea drives him. To explain interpersonal inter- 
course the body seems essential, and Berkeley practically 
admits it. In spite of himself, he is obliged to talk of the 
control which the individual has over the body. But this 
is obviously absurd if the body is merely an idea, for ideas 
are not under our control. The consequence is, God must 
mediate all communication between individuals. Surely a 
busy God. A new question arises, however. How does God 
know our thoughts? That we have ideas he presumably 
knows, since he causes them in us. But our thoughts are, 
according to Berkeley, under our control. As active, although 
subordinate, spirits we make plans and build up purposes and; 
peculiar image-complexes. How can God have cognizance of 
these and communicate them to others? They are, by hypoth-j 
esis, as independent of his knowledge as the most pronounced 
realist could desire. It is only their mental character that 
salves the idealist's conscience. Again, if things exist as ideas' 
in the Divine Mind, must not the body, too, so exist? But 
this gives it an independence of my spirit; either, then, I am 
related to God so far as I am related to this archetypal body, j 
or I am not related to it and it is not in any sense my body. I 
All this shows how inadequately idealism can deal with the' 
mind-body problem; yet all our empirical knowledge cries J 
out the reality of this problem which asseverates that minds I 
have their roots in a matrix common to all, in a ground which! 



INSUFFICIENCY OF MENTAL PLURALISM 



i5i 



mental pluralism cannot explain. It will be our task in 
another chapter to show that the mind-body problem is a 
real or ontological one; that the individual's body cannot be 
taken up into his mind. 

When these seven problems are held in mind and brought 
into relation with one another, it is interesting to notice how 
they focus on the mind-body problem. This fact acquires 
peculiar point when we bear in mind the ambiguity of the body. 
The body is intimately connected with the mind in the individ- 
ual's thought of himself, he seems to dwell in it and permeate it, 
yet it also assumes a marked independence and is undeniably 
a part of the physical world. Both science and common sense 
take for granted that the body plays a dominant role in 
intercommunication and is intimately concerned v/ith the 
rise and disappearance of minds. Furthermore, things seem 
to have the right to possess the same permanence as the body 
which is nourished by them. Again, how natural seems 
the explanation that individuals have corresponding thing- 
experiences because their bodies are actually under the control 
of a common environment? We are surprised when we 
consider these hypotheses by their apparent simplicity and 
their harmony with the facts and with one another. The 
functions of the sense-organs, the part played by the tongue 
and the vocal cords, the facts of birth and death, the order in 
which experiences come, the correspondence of the experiences 
of individuals — all are accounted for coherently and simply. 
But the realization that this connected chain of constructions 
conflicts in its present form with the apparent reduction of 
the external world to elements in the field of experience pre- 
vents its adoption until it has been reinterpreted. Evidently, 
all that is needed to make the push of this view of the world 
irresistible is a satisfactory realistic epistemology and a 
solution of the mind-body problem in harmony with this 
epistemology and with empirical facts. Granted these, 
mental pluralism would rest in the environment which its 
own insufficiency requires. 



13 



CHAPTER VIII 
MEDIATE REALISMS 

TN THE preceding chapter we reached the decision that 
-^ mental pluraHsm suggests problems which it is unable to 
answer. These problems point unmistakably to a con- 
tinuous reality in which minds grow and function. Can we 
gain any insight into the nature of this environing reality? 
That still remains to be seen. A realism of some sort has still 
to clarify and found itself. But at this point we again find 
competing principles at work. Those realisms which are most 
strongly influenced by the epistemological theories of idealism, 
while refusing to accept the compromise offered by absolute 
idealism, take the form of ''stuff idealisms. " As a rule, these 
stuff idealisms establish themselves by means of the principle 
of analogy. They grant an environing reality and, rather than 
admit that it is unknowable, they read it in the light of con- 
sciousness. It is most interesting that these realistic idealists 
are, in the main, psychologists. Realistic idealisms vary all 
the way from the crudest mind-stuff theories, through the 
panpsychism of Paulsen, Prince, Strong, and others, to 
monadism. We might even place in this group that interesting 
attempt at compromise between immediate realism and ideal- 
ism to be found in the writings of M. Bergson. But there is 
another possibility open to realism. May we not hold that our 
tested data and theories give us knowledge about what deserves 
to be called a physical world ? We have hinted at this mediate 
epistemological realism more than once in the foregoing pages. 
Let us see whether we can carry it through and prove it far 
preferable to the realistic idealisms mentioned above. 

When we have once clearly realized that mental pluralism is 
unable to explain its own existence and characteristics, we are 
naturally led to ask ourselves whether idealism has not over- 
shot the mark in its interpretation of the Advance of the 
Personal. Instead of pointing forward to the principle that 
nothing can exist which is not content of some mind, did it not 

182 



MEDIATE REALISMS 183 

rather undermine a false view of knowledge — that found 
in immediate realisms? It will be remembered that we 
examined and denied the idealistic principle that the object 
known is necessarily inseparable from the knower. We would 
not even qualify this statement were there not a characteristic 
ambiguity in the word ''knower." Sometimes we look upon 
the knower as the subject-self and sometimes as the conscious 
individual. The question before us is, accordingly, to attain 
a view of knowledge which satisfies the teaching contained in 
the Advance of the Personal while looking upon the object 
known as independent of the knower, i.e., independent of the 
field of the individual's experience when the object is other than 
an element in the field. Let us see whether or not mental 
pluralism affirms the existence of such knowledge and is thus 
a secret traitor to idealism. 

Closer scrutiny of mental pluralism reveals the fact that it 
does not carry the idealistic interpretation of the Advance of 
the Personal into complete application. In other words, it 
stops short of solipsism. It does so because the facts of life 
forbid its doing otherwise. Solipsism corresponds, in philos- 
ophy, to a test experiment in science. Any principles which 
involve it are by that very fact disproved. Now, the self 
which knows can only be my self. It follows that other 
selves are my constructs; but I refuse to draw an idealistic 
conclusion from this fact and hold that they are nothing 
else. This refusal means that, in this instance at least, 
I do not interpret the Advance of the Personal as signifying 
that because the world is somehow my idea it can be nothing 
more. ICnowledge apparently uses contentual fact as the 
object of knowledge without always being aware that it is 
contentual fact in the mind of the knower. Even when this 
situation is pointed out, knowledge refuses to draw the con- 
clusion which subjective idealism indicates. And, strange to 
say, while idealism is insistent when the physical world is 
concerned, it acquiesces in this violation of its foundation 
when other selves are concerned. 

Idealism bases itself on two principles which are frequently 
confused. The one is formal and rests on a supposed relation 
between the object known and the knower. We have already 



i84 CRITICAL REALISM 

criticised this supposition sufficiently in a preceding chapter. 
The other principle is empirical and asserts that all objects 
of thought are mental. We called this the argument from 
content. It is more widespread than is usually supposed. 
This principle is supported by Kant's theory of knowledge, 
in so far as he emphasizes the fact that phenomena are creations 
of the human understanding; it is appealed to by Berkeley 
when he reduces ''ideas'' to sensations; it is acknowledged by 
the pragmatist when he points out the reconstructions which 
things undergo in experience. Opponents of the argument 
usually misunderstand it and call it psychologism. We, on 
the contrary, welcomed it and demonstrated that it is valid 
against all forms of immediate realism. 

It is obvious upon reflection that two assumptions, closely 
connected, are taken for granted in this argument. These 
are (i) that objects must be actually present in the field of 
experience to be known; and (2) that knowledge of that 
which is non-mental cannot be mediated by what is mental. 

The assumption that knowledge always involves the 
actual presence to the mind of the object known is a survival 
of Natural Realism. The Advance of the Personal either 
destroys it or leads to solipsism. When we come to examine 
the assumption more closely, we' discover that it is founded 
upon the view that knowledge consists of the presence of an 
object to the self, whereas it may be the presence of an idea 
of an object instead of the object itself. Since the idea is an 
object of thought, this confusion easily arises. But we have 
discussed this more critical view of knowledge in Chapter V. 

Now this first principle of idealism is used as a foundation 
for the second. The argument is as follows: Since objects to 
be known must be present in the field of experience, they must 
be mental. All known objects are, therefore, mental and we 
can possess no knowledge of what is non-mental. If we grant 
the first principle, the second certainly follows. But we have 
seen that the first principle involves the obviously false 
assertion that nothing outside of the individual's mind can be 
known by him, because only objects which are present in the 
field of his experience can be present literally to his mind. 

Now, because things which common sense assumes are 



MEDIATE REALISMS 185 

present to the mind and at the same time non-mental turn out 
to be mental, it in no wise follows that objects known which 
are not present to the mind in a literal sense are mental and 
necessarily so. Such a conclusion cannot be deduced from 
the facts upon which the idealist relies. To prove the proposi- 
tion that only existences which are mental can be known 
requires the premise that objects not present in a literal sense 
cannot be known ; and this premise is a deduction from the 
principle of subjective idealism. But mental pluralism degen- 
erates into solipsism if the principle of subjective idealism 
be held. Must not our conclusion be, that the facts do not 
furnish a ba^is for the empirical principle of idealism (that all 
objects of knowledge are mental) any more than an examina- 
tion of knowledge furnishes a foundation for the formal 
principle of idealism? Knowledge as such makes no dis- 
crimination between the mental and the non-mental ; this 
distinction is one between the objects of knowledge. 

Having come unscathed through the fire of the idealistic 
principles, knowledge of the non-mental must m.eet another 
enemy. It is an assumption of many thinkers that knowledge 
of the non-mental cannot be mediated by what is mental. 
Berkeley's attack upon the copy, or resemblance, view of our 
knowledge of physical objects will occur to the reader. ''I 
answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or 
figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If 
we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it 
impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between 
our ideas.'' {Principles, sec. 8. See also Dialogues, pp. SS f-) 
This copy view of knowledge which Berkeley attacks has 
often been misunderstood. There is no assertion that images 
intervene in perception between thing-experiences and the 
percipient; instead, it is held that ''ideas" which are per- 
ceived directly are judged by thought to be copies of 
reals which cannot be apprehended. It is often held that 
a still more convincing argument against the copy view 
of knowledge exists in the query: How could w^e ever get 
to the real to find out whether it resembled our con- 
struct? We can't reach behind our ''ideas" and drag out the 
reality in order to make a comparison. If we could apprehend 



i86 CRITICAL REALISM 

the reality, what would be the use of the comparison? 

Knowledge would seem to require tests within experience, 
and similarity between our construct and the object cannot 
furnish the basis of such an immanent test. Granted that 
similarity can never be the test for scientific knowledge of 
reality, the question naturally arises whether it should be 
considered the ideal of knowledge. Berkelej^ confirmed 
sensationalist that he is, can think of no other ideal, although 
the ideal appears to him self-contradictory. That which is 
mental can resemble only that which is mental. We shall 
try to show that the knowledge of the physical woild which 
science achieves does not imply resemblance as an ideal. 

In order to get the idealistic point of view clearly in mind, \ 
let us examine another instance of this theory that the non- j 
mental cannot be known by the mental. I take this argument 
from a characteristic exposition of panpsychism. ''But, if 
mental states are real, in experiencing them we enjoy a sample 
of what reality is like, and it is at least possible that things-in- 
themselves resemble this sample, and are accordingly mental 
in nature. ... If the only reality of which we have any 
experience is consciousness, we have no material out of which 
to form the conception of a reality of different nature, and 
that conception is consequently perfectly groundless and 
arbitrary.'* (Strong, Why the Mind Has a Body, pp. 287-8; 
italics mine.^) The apparent assumption here is that con- 
sciousness is a stuff, or material, and that it is impossible to 
conceive of another material different from it, because we are 
limited to consciousness. To this I would reply that, in the 
first place, I do not think that consciousness is a stuff, and, in 
the second place, knowledge is not limited to, if indeed it 
concerns itself at all with stuffs. If the knowledge of the 
physical world that science has gleaned by painstaking investi- 
gation is veritably knowledge, it is indeed satisfactory even if 
it does not inform us about matter as a stuff. 

Now there can be no doubt that our knowledge of exist- 
ences external to our consciousness must be built up on the 

1 Some years ago I pointed out that the essential fallacy in the principle, that the mental 
cannot know the non-mental, was the assumption that to know a thing was somehow to be it. 
I am still convinced that the argument advanced by Professor Strong is implicitly based on 
some such idea. 



MEDIATE REALISMS 187 

basis of experience. Hence, our idea of an existence and the 
existence as we think it are both mental. These two objects 
of attention, the idea qua idea and the idea qua thing are 
actually the same construct assigned to different domains 
and qualified differently as a consequence. The idea as thing 
is thought of as independent of the mind and as containing 
possibilities as yet unglimpsed. If we disregard this difference 
of position, they are identical. So long as we remain at the 
level of Natural Realism, idea and thing are both supposed 
to be given, and the category of resemblance can be applied 
to them. I can compare my idea of a thing with the thing as 
it is subsequently experienced. Thus the copy view develops 
and has its value within the field of the individual's experience. 
It concerns the correspondence between thing-experiences and 
our ideas of them. But we must rid ourselves of the copy 
ideal of knowledge when we pass to science. Images give 
way to propositions, and we must raise ourselves beyond the 
level of mere picture- thinking. We know that a physical 
thing has such a ratio to our standard unit, that it has such a 
structure and is capable of functioning in certain definite 
ways ; but we do not attempt to gain a mental copy of the thing 
(c/. Chap. II). When we do so, we are lapsing back into a 
more subtle form of Natural Realism. It is unfortunate that 
most forms of mediate realism, so far as they interpret the 
primary qualities naively, fall into this copy view of knowledge. 
We may say, then, that resemblance is the common-sense 
ideal of knowledge, because it concerns itself with relations 
between objects, the thing, and the idea of it, within the field 
of experience. This primitive ideal is easily carried over to 
the more critical realm of science and survives there for a 
long time, as can be seen in Locke's theory of the primary 
qualities as archetypes of the primary ideas. Nevertheless, 
it must be relinquished and a new view of knowledge developed. 
Scientific knovdedge deals with the structure, functions, 
relative sizes, and relations of things, and this information is 
expressible in judgments, and not in images. The category of 
resemblance is no longer applicable. To conclude this antici- 
patory discussion of the nature of knowledge of that which 
is external to the field of the individual's experience: there 



i88 CRITICAL REALISM 

seems to be no adequate reason that idealism can advance 
against the assumption that the mental can mediate knowledge 
of the non-mental. Only he who has a primitive idea of 
scientific knowledge can maintain that Berkeley's argument 
against it is valid. It is valid against Locke, but that is all. 
Science makes the claim to have knowledge of the physical 
world, and, certainly, this garnered knowledge enables us to 
adjust ourselves to nature; a better test scarcely could 
be ' desired. 

This long and rather technical examination of the empirical 
basis of idealism was necessary to prepare the way for an 
answer to the question : Why is it that idealists are insistent 
on their supposed principle when a knowledge of nature is 
concerned and not when other selves are involved? We have 
already learned that idealism has so taken its principle as to 
allow knowledge of the mental when that which is known does 
not exist in the mind of the knower. We have also discovered 
that this extension of knowledge cannot be justified on the 
empirical ground on which it is supposedly based. Knowledge 
of other minds is not consistent with subjective idealism. 
There are at least two reasons for this disingenuous attitude 
on the part of the idealist. The first is, that the knowledge of 
other selves in some sense and to some degree is so apparent 
and so susceptible of test by commiunication that it is folly 
to deny it ; the second, that the idealist has no fault to find with 
mental existence. And here peeps out the cloven hoof of 
idealism — the lack of disinterested interest. Idealism as a 
system has always been in alliance with religion and with a 
spiritualistic ethics and has been controlled by the purpose 
to show that the non -mental is unknowable. Consequently, 
it confuses what it would prove, were its principles correct, 
with what it desires to prove. Only in this way can I account 
for the confusion which is so prevalent in idealism between 
the logical implications of the empirical principle and those 
which are actually drawn. 

Let me also call attention to the fact that it is more than 
doubtful that the self is mental in the modern sense of that 
term. The self is not to be identified with the stream of 
consciousness of any one moment. Yet this is what the 



MEDIATE REALISMS 189 

panpsychist seems forced to hold; and I do not see how any- 
one — Strong, for instance — can avoid this difficulty. The 
monadist has a far more adequate idea of the self than the 
panpsychist ; but he is confronted, as we shall see, with special 
difficulties. If the self is non-mental, can the idealist main- 
tain that he knows his self and the selves of others unless he is 
prepared to admit that the non-mental can be known by means 
of the mental? 

To confirm us in the conclusion we have drawn in regard 
to the inconsistency of idealism, all that is necessary is an 
examination of the method usually employed by idealists to 
prove the existence of other minds. The principle upon which 
they lay stress is that of analogy. We have already noted 
its use by Berkeley. The argument is as follows: ¥/hen I 
know your mind, it is because I judge that you have thoughts 
like those which I have. I make certain gestures and speak 
certain words. An organism similar to mine does the same. 
Therefore I infer by analogy that there are other minds. 

But how can I know that you, another being, use these ges- 
tures and words to convey to me the meanings which I attach 
to them? How can I know that they are causally connected 
with another mind for which they possess a corresponding 
significance? To this it may be replied that these sounds 
and gestures are connected with a body other than the one to 
which I connect my words and gestures. True; but what does 
this fact prove? If my body is only my experience, so are the 
other bodies only my experiences. I admit that my field of 
experience has peculiarities which suggest other minds, but 
these other minds are likewise only ideas of mine to which I 
tend to give a reality equal to that which I give to that idea 
which I call my mind. But all this takes place in the field of 
my experience which, by hypothesis, I cannot transcend either 
literally or cognitively. If, then, knowledge involves the 
actual presence of that which is known, it is impossible to have 
knowledge of other minds. We may feel sure that there are 
other minds, but we cannot come into a literal contact with 
them. It is sometimes said that we infer the existence of other 
minds by analogy. If by ' ' inference ' ' is meant the mental proc- 
ess by means of which the individual comes to the conclusion 



iQo CRITICAL REALISM 

that he believes there are other minds, there can be no doubt 
that inference is at work in this case, although genetic analy- 
sis leads us to believe that the thought of other selves is as 
early as the thought of oneself. If by * 'inference'' is meant 
a mysterious function which enables the individual to reach 
out beyond his field of experience and apprehend another mind, 
then we assuredly cannot infer the existence of other minds 
by analogy. The argument from analogy gives the basis for a 
hypothesis which everything hastens to confirm, but it does 
not furnish the ground for a deduction. But I am not at 
present concerned so much with the grounds for our. admitted 
belief in other minds as with the implications of the belief. I 
believe not only that there are other minds, but also that I can 
know them. In this way the ''that'' goes hand in hand with a 
"v/hat." Indeed, I do not see how they can be separated. But 
if they are, subjective ideaHsm is flouted. The very attem.pt 
to prove the existence of other minds is a surrender of the 
limitation of knowledge to the field of the individual's expe- 
rience. Here again, however, idealism retains its element of 
validity in so far as its adoption of the argument from analogy 
bears witness to the mediateness of one's knowledge of other 
selves. We must never confuse certainty of knowledge with 
immediacy, i.e,, with intuition.^ 

This refusal of idealism to draw its logical consequences 
when it comes to the problem of a knowledge of other selves is 
significant. I am forced to conclude that solipsism is so 
contrary to our beliefs, habits, and mental organization, which 
are thoroughly social, that it cannot gain a foothold. On the 
other hand, many individuals seem to consent readily to the 
identification of things with mental constructs which have no 
cognitive import. It is true that idealisms are usually vague 
when it comes to the question of the existence of the physical 
world (note the discussion of Berkeley in the preceding 
chapter), and can generally be so interpreted as to leave a 
relative independence to things. Nevertheless, there is a 
difference in attitude toward the reality of other selves, as 
compared with things, marked enough to demand explanation. 

1 Obviously, my point is that Berkeley never realized the implication iov knowledge of our 
admitted knowledge about other selves. It is this implication which v/e are trying to work out. 



MEDIATE REALISMS 191 

If idealism involves solipsism, mental pluralism of the 
empirical sort which admits communication and mutual 
knowledge must involve realism. Let us see whether it will 
give us a clue to the nature of cognition. Minds, we have 
seen, do not intersect; active interpretation, subject to error, 
of the activities of other minds, so far as these affect us, is the 
sole source of knowledge. We have no right to call this 
knowledge inadequate or to deny it the name of knowledge 
simply because it is a construction on our part. That, as we 
have surely realized by now, results from the prejudices which 
Natural Realism has made almost second nature to man. 
The parallelism with the problem of our knowledge of the 
physical world is not fax to seek. In both cases, examination 
of the real extent of the individual mind leads to a readjust- 
ment of the idea of knowledge. If knowledge does not involve 
the actual presence of the object known, may we not have 
knowledge of the physical? The only principle which might 
interpose itself — tha.t knowledge of the physical cannot be 
mediated by the mental — we have already discussed. 

An existence which I know, in this case another mind, is 
numerically distinct from the mind knowing. My knowledge 
qua knowledge has no relation to the mind of which it holds 
good. My knowledge is contained in my ideas, and these 
are personal and cannot be shared. There is, moreover, 
nothing to warrant the assumption that my ideas, when 
they are adjudged by me to contain knowledge, must be 
connected directly and in a unique waj^ with that which 
they know. What good, indeed, could such a connection 
do? Granted our analysis of the field of the individual's 
experience, such a relation must needs be external and 
irrelevant. Hence, it could not make my idea true. There 
must be in the mind of him who holds this view some 
vague spatial reminiscence, some transmuted remmant of 
Natural Realism, a prejudice that the idea which contains 
knowledge must be guided to that which it knows. But 
I do not think much of an idea which does not contain 
in itself the indication of the object known as part of its 
meaning. Localization and identification of an object is 
the core around which the rest of my information is built. 



192 CRITICAL REALISM 

What thing I mean can surely not be separated from what 
I mean of it. Yet there are levels in knowledge which make 
us tend to separate these factors. Knowledge ordinarily 
works within a classification which it takes for granted. As 
we shall see later, immediate realism seems to find a foothold 
in this functional distinction. Once warned that the distinc- 
tion between a thing meant and the idea of the thing is a 
functional distinction within the field of experience, we realize 
that the total idea of the existent contains both. Therefore, 
to tie one end of a string to the idea and attach the other 
end to the existent would do no good ; it would be like leading 
a man who is not blind. Besides, who could have the ''inside 
information'' sufficient to enable him to hitch together the 
right idea with the right existent ? A little reflection is surely 
enough to convince one that a unique, external, cognitive 
relation between an idea in an individual's mind and an 
existent is both unnecessary and absurd. 

Let us return to the explanation of the fact that a cognitive 
relation between our idea and the existent known is not 
needed. The localization or identification of the object is, we 
have said, a fundamental part of the construct which contains 
our knowledge and which we ordinarily treat as the existent. 
If I told you that I knew an object but did not know where it 
was or what some of its relations were or how ix could be 
classed, you would certainly have the right to feel skeptical 
about my knowledge. Even to state that an object is ph3^sical 
is to assert some knowledge of its relations. An object which 
is physical is so far classified and localized. And I do not know 
of any object a knowledge of which does not involve, implicitly 
or explicitly, this elementary core of knowledge. Without it, 
we could not mean din. object. From such general identifica- 
tion as a limit, we pass insensibly to more specific localization 
wherein the position and relations of an existent are given to the 
degree required or to the degree possible. The layman can 
tell you where a star like Sirius is to be found, but his location 
of it is naturally vague compared with an astronomer's. It 
is this identification of an object by means of its relations, 
spatial and temporal, and its classification as in a certain 
domain that constitutes what is usually called the reference 



MEDIATE REALISMS 193 

of the idea or the intent of our knowledge. So far as the 
purpose is identification, these relations are thought of as 
external; they give the context of the object in such a way 
that we can handle it cognitively. We have already noted 
(Chap. Ill) how this common reference begins with actual 
pointing and develops to standardized positions in a con- 
ceptual space and time. It . is so related to the object of 
which it is the context, or means of identification, that 
it can be used to tie down any additional idea to the 
j-object intended. Thus intention, or reference, has a socially 
developed instrument; it involves the correspondence of my 
^means of organizing objects with yours. In this way we 
make corresponding and controlled selections of objects about 
which we are thinking. When asked what house I mean when 
jl am describing the interior of a dwelling, I reply, ''The 
house on the corner of Division Street so many blocks west of 
the Campus," a means of identification supposedly known to 
^the inquirer. If asked what person I am referring to, I reply 
■by giving his name, the place where he lives, and his profes- 
sion. Some such context must exist before the idea possesses 
a reference and deserves the name of knowledge. 

There is, then, no need for a guide quite external to the 

individual's experience in order that an idea may be referred 

to the proper existent. Such reference as knowledge demands 

is worked out within experience by means of the structure I 

^have just described. In order that another individual may 

-understand the reference which I give to an idea, it is not 

necessary that he share my space-experience, perceptual or 

conceptual. That we have already seen is impossible. All 

that is needed is that there be a tested correspondence between 

;the contexts which we assign to the idea. Now the context 

'is, from its very nature, more general and abstract than the 

construct which it surrounds and enmeshes or the idea which 

is assigned to it. Hence, relatively to them, it takes on the 

character of an a priori background more primitive and general 

ithan they. To illustrate, spatial relations are so recurrent 

and so similar that they are early abstracted and generalized. 

The consequence is the creation of mathematical space as a 

' menstruum in which the concrete and varied things of this 



194 CRITICAL REALISM 

complex world of ours rest. The use made of this contrast 
by the scientist in his description and analysis of space-and- 
time-fiUing bodies is too familiar to require explanation. It 
is for this reason that a spatial context functions best as a 
means of reference between individuals. It acts like an 
accepted background or like a recognized and recurrent theme 
in music. But the same motives hold good for the individual 
and his thought. Spatial relations increasingly furnish the 
background in front of which objects move and change in 
various ways. It is to the credit of Kant that he saw the 
importance of this distinction; it is really the foundation 
of his contrast between the a priori and the a posteriori. It is 
in time and space that the objective world of phenomena is 
organized. Unfortunately, he did not approach the question 
from the genetic side, did not clearly enough distinguish 
between perceptual and conceptual space and time, and did 
not connect it, as we have attempted to connect it, with the 
problem of reference. 

When we come back from this apparent excursus to the 
question of other minds, we find that our knowledge of other 
minds involves the problem of reference. In history, for 
instance, we are forced to use space and time as means to the 
selection of one individual from others. The same is true 
for our references to contemporaries, although here again 
the additional aid of proper names comes to our assistance. 
But an examination of the knowledge possessed by one mind of 
another bears out the conclusion that no cognitive relation be- 
tween them is required. So far as such knowledge is concerned 
a pluralism is quite thinkable. But epistemological idealism 
can never admit a pluralism; it seems condemned to move 
between a monism based on the impossibility of separating the 
known from the knower, and a solipsism which asserts that 
knowledge is confined to the contents of the individual's mind. 
It follows, then, that mental pluralism involves an episte- 
mological realism. We do know other minds, although we 
are not able to possess their contents. This fact has been 
frequently recognized in a vague way of late, although its 
exact significance has not been appreciated. Other minds, it is 
said, are ejects. And a discussion of ejects and of introjection 



MEDIATE REALISMS 195 

may make the cognitive side of mental pluralism clearer. 
Probably two thinkers, Clifford and Avenarius, have done 
more to bring the problem of the nature of knowledge of 
other minds to the front than has the traditional philosophy of 
either Great Britain or Germany. Philosophy was too easily 
satisfied with impersonal logical motives or with the argument 
from analogy. Clifford's statement of what he means by 
the term ''eject'' is interesting. ''When I come to the conclu- 
sion that you are conscious and that there are objects in your 
consciousness similar to those in mine, I am not inferring any 
actual or possible feelings of my own, but your feelings, which 
cannot by any possibility become objects in my consciousness. 
. . . I . . . call these inferred existences ejects to distinguish 
them from objects.'* We have already noted the logical 
difficulties which confront any such inference if based on 
analogy. Inference works within the distinctions of knowledge 
and is not a function which lifts the mind beyond its natural 
limitations. That I do contrast my mind with your mind 
and connect these minds with numerically distinct organisms 
within the field of my experience is undoubted. The "you'' 
whom I conclude to be conscious is evidently the individual 
composed of mind and body towards which I react and with 
whom I communicate. But this body is my experience; to 
assign it a consciousness like my own while it is so considered 
is absurd. Hence, to make such an assignment, I must take a 
realistic attitude toward this body which I call yours. Now 
this is what is done from the start. Ejection goes hand in 
hand with Natural Realism and can be understood only when 
considered from the genetic standpoint. Thus it is within 
the world as common sense sees it that all these realistic 
meanings develop. Ejection is no more mysterious than 
Natural Realism. Why is it, then, that ejects appear to 
challenge our ordinary outlook more than physical things do? 
The reason is that the unsatisfactoriness of Natural Realism 
reveals itself sooner and clearer in the case of other minds 
than in the case of physical things; yet idealism does not 
offer itself as a palliative. To reduce things to our ideas 
seems within the limits of possibility, but to reduce other selves 
to my ideas is frowned upon as inadmissible. Other minds are 



196 CRITICAL REALISM 

so bound up with our knowledge of our own that the denial 
of them is felt to be a flight from the problem rather than its 
solution. Yet the fact that I cannot have another's experiences 
in a literal sense is also forced upon me as the only possible 
interpretation of undeniable facts. Other minds are not 
perceived and, therefore, their existence and entire separate- 
ness is not blurred by a misunderstanding of perception as is 
the case with physical exist ents. Natural Realism takes it 
for granted that things are present in perception. It is almost 
impossible to take this naive position in reference to other 
minds. Clifford arrived at the stage where he realized this, 
but he still assumed that physical things are actually '* objects 
in consciousness.'' 

We have hinted again and again that perception is not 
knowledge, although it gives the basis of knowledge. I mean 
that objects are not literally present to the knower as they 
appear to be in perception. Better yet, objects are present, 
but they are not the objects we take them to be. They are 
thing-experiences and not physical existents. When this 
blurring is overcome and perception is properly adjusted to 
knowledge, there still remain differences in our way of regard- 
ing physical things and other minds. The content and 
qualifications of other minds are constructed in terms of our 
contents as such. When I assert that another has experiences 
like those which I have, I transfer to him a tang of imme- 
diacy and sense of control as well as meanings and percepts. 
In this way, knowledge approaches nearest to that originalj 
ideal, an intuition. I read other minds in terms of my own| 
mind, but I refuse more and more to read physical things in 
terms of my mind. Sympathy and Einfuhlung are strength- 
ened as social ideals, while animism is rejected by science. 
We may call this sympathy which depends upon penetrative 
and subtle interpretation and broad interests a ''mediate" 
intuition. I call it a mediate intuition to distinguish it from 
the mystical views of intuition again coming into vogue owing 
to a misunderstanding of Natural Realism. 

But it is a mistake, encouraged by psychology of the 
introspective type, to suppose that knowledge of other selves is 
characteristically the construction of their mental contents 



MEDIATE REALISM 197 

in terms of our own. Ordinarily, we treat people as complex 
objects which are able to perform certain acts of which animals 
and inorganic things are incapable. When I think of Plato, 
for instance, I think of him as a genius in the field of philosophy, 
as the author of the Republic, as a sympathizer with the 
Spartan ideals, and so on. I have his work and type of mind 
before me as objects. These give me knowledge about Plato. 
Now the interesting thing is that I can add to this objective 
construct, which is my knowledge of Plato, an attempt to 
envisage the inner control of ideas, the surge of feelings and 
passions which I believe accompanied and found expression 
in the behavior which history describes. The result passes 
insensibly beyond knowledge as such and seeks to achieve a 
veritable intuition of another's field of experience. I strive 
to penetrate into the ideals and prejudices and values of the 
Athenian of long ago and at times hope to realize the attach- 
ment of these stable elements to the swirling current of the 
man's inner life. But I fall back disillusioned from such moods 
of constructive Einfuhlung; the chasm to bridge is too great. It 
makes me realize, however, that all insight is based on the 
experience of the individual knowing, which fiows into the mold 
set by the behavior of the person known. Thus Natural Real- 
ism, once scotched for the perceptual realm, is soon killed for the 
ejective realm. Eject and object form an indissoluble unity 
when our construction of another person reaches its highest 
level and both are seen to be knowledge-of, and not intuition. 

It is the inability to keep these two sides together that 
leads to panpsychism and to materialism, respectively. The 
panpsychist makes a thing-in-itself out of the ejective feature 
and rejects the objective side as not being knowledge. The 
materialist accepts the objective side and rejects the control 
side, linked as it is with a mental field not shareable by others. 
A sane, realistic outlook admits both and sees how they go 
together in our knowledge of reality. 

In order to clear up the nature of ejection, we must briefly 
consider introjection, a term we owe to Avenarius. Such an 
examination is peculiarly necessary, because a refutation of 
dualism has been based upon it. I may remark that certain 
thinkers confuse any mediate, epistemological realism with 

14 



198 CRITICAL REALISM 

dualism in the derogatory metaphysical sense of that term, 
although they have not shown that the connection is inevitable. 
''The essence of introjection/' writes Ward, ''consists in 
applying to the immediate experience of my fellow creatures 
conceptions which have no counterpart in my own/' (I see 
the sun, but I assume that another has in him a percept of the 
sun.) "Thus while my environment is an external world for 
me, his experience is for me an internal world in him. This is 
introjection. And since I am led to apply this conception 
to all my fellow-men and it is applied by all my fellow-men 
to me, I naturally apply it also to myself.'' (Ward, Natural- 
ism and Agnosticism^ Vol. II, p. 172.) This interpretation of 
introjection seems to me founded on a misunderstanding of our 
natural outlook on the world and the motives which gradually 
modify that outlook. At first, I assume that another person 
perceives the external world much as I do. For him, also, 
perception is an event in which the common, independent 
physical world reveals itself. It is not until certain motives 
in my own experience suggest to me that I perceive the appear- 
ances of things and not the things themselves that I carry the 
same distinction over to another's experience. In our criticism 
of Natural Realism, we had no need to appeal to introjection ; 
the contrast between percepts and physical things was forced 
upon us by the facts. If this be the case, introjection is only a 
social motive which strengthens and clarifies tendencies which 
are already existent in the experience of the individual as such. 
The Advance of the Personal leads to the realization that the 
field of the individual's experience is mental and that the terms 
"private" and "common" are meanings which have developed 
within it to qualify functionally separable spheres. The 
result is the empirical mental pluralism upon which we have 
laid so much stress. In order to emphasize the fact that this 
standpoint is not that of psychology, we called the objective 
elements of the field thing-experiences instead of percepts. 

I am fully persuaded that Avenarius has led thinkers 
astray. It is impossible to remain at the naively realistic 
outlook, and it is possible to go beyond it without falling into 
errors and contradictions. I am confident that the method 
I have adopted accomplishes this result. But the point is 



MEDIATE REALISMS 199 

Iso important for a mediate, epistemological realism that I wish 
[to consider it at more length. 

In his admirable study of the logical character of psychol- 
logy, Mr. Taylor falls back on the world as common sense 
lexperiences it. Unfortunately, he over-simplifies the direct 
[experience of actual life. It is true that we, as sentient and 
ppurposive beings, react directly to our environment; but we 
also nourish a private, inner world which fronts this external, 
common world. Thus it is not true that ''So long as I am 
concerned only with the analysis of my own experience, 
there is nothing to suggest the distinction between a physical 
and a psychical aspect of existence." {Elements of Meta- 
physics ^ p. 298.) To support this denial I must again 
call attention to the analysis in the first few chapters. But 
this assumption made by Avenarius, Ward, and Taylor is the 
primary fallacy of their whole argument. They hold that all 
tendencies to dualism come through a misinterpretation of 
the social element; I hold that the social element merely 
emphasizes distinctions already present. The interesting 
thing is that Taylor so lucidly states the motives which lead us 
to mental pluralism and does not enter a caveat except where 
psychology substitutes images and ideas for thing-experiences 
qualified as common. With his criticism of the standpoint of 
psychology I would in large measure agree. It is a special 
science and as such has its point of view which cannot be 
regarded as valid for epistemology. When we come to treat 
the mind-body problem, this fact will be seen to be of tremen- 
dous significance. But introjection, when properly carried 
on under the control of philosophy, results in the empirical 
miental pluralism which we have stressed. The field of the 
individual's experience, with its distinctions and meanings, is 
the foundation of epistemology. 

If the foregoing interpretation of ejection and of introjection 
3e valid, the nature of knowledge of other minds is clear. 
Lt no point did we feel the necessity to assume either an 
ictual penetration of other minds or a unique cognitive relation 
i^hich would guarantee the reference. It follows that mental 
pluralism involves a mediate, epistemological realism and 
khus contains a clue to the nature of knowledge of that 



200 CRITICAL REALISM 

which is not in the field of the individuars experience. To be, 
in the case of other minds, is not to be known, Knowledge 
does not require the actual presence of the object known. 
Thus there seems to be no good reason to suppose that being 
can be defined by its relation to knowing. Being, it would 
seem, is independent of knowing, which is a transient event 
earnestly disclaiming any grip on being. In truth, I have no 
patience with the dogmatic purblindness of idealism on its 
epistemological side. Its only excuse is the recalcitrant naivete 
of immediate realisms. 

When we once admit the distinction between being and 
knowledge, we recognize that these are meanings which have 
developed within experience. Up to the present we have 
concerned ourselves mainly with knowledge. We shall now 
investigate the significance of being. We shall see that, in a 
very true sense, everything can be said to exist. But not 
everything exists in the realm in which it first lays claim to 
existence; if it did, there could be no negative judgments. 
The best way to approach the question of being is to study it 
at the difterent levels which we have already examined. At 
the level of Natural Realism, that thing exists or has being 
with which we must reckon. The physical world has being 
because we must react towards it. Thus being involved 
primarily qualification by our responses as active creatures 
seeking self-preservation. It is evident that we, as individuals, 
are involved in this semi-biological derivation of the resonant 
reality-feeling which surrounds that which we admit to be 
existent. Existences are as real as ourselves. It is we who 
respond; it is they to which we respond. It must be remem- 
bered that, at this level, man assumes that he can perceive 
these objects to which he assigns existence and that such 
assignment is essentially immediate and not refiective. The 
individual is felt to be one among many which are as real as 
he feels himself to be. It is upon this as a background that 
philosophy must build in its study of being. Philosophy does 
not so much create meanings as determine how they should 
be applied in order to escape contradictions. 

With this analysis of being in mind, let us study other 
attempts to define being. Passing over Berkeley's view as 



MEDIATE REALISMS 



20I 



[now discredited, we find another idealistic phrase which is 

[becoming popular. If being cannot be limited to being 

[perceived, then, it is suggested, it must be identified with 

perceiving. To use the scholastic Latin, esse est percipere, 

[Such a definition was already implicit in Berkeley's conception 

[of the self. The self is that which perceives, thinks, wills, 

[and performs divers operations. In the first place, we saw good 

treason to doubt the existence of such a substantive self as 

[that which Berkeley had in mind. His psychology had in 

[it too strong an infusion of Rational Psychology with its 

substantive entities and acts. And, in the next place, to per- 

Fceive involves something which is perceived. If the ''esse'' of 

|the latter is separable from the act of which it is an object, 

there are two kinds of being, and realism remains possible. 

Jut, as a matter of fact, this attempt to define being by 

reference to an operation of the self does not have its roots in 

the structure of experience. The individual recognizes that 

tie is only one thing among others ; to these, as to himself, he 

fcan take either a theoretical or a practical attitude. 

What, then, can the phrase ''to be is to perceive" mean? 

[It is evidently worded as an antithesis to the principle enun- 

dated by Berkeley. Its contrast-significance consists in the 

relinquishment of the belief that existence can be stated 

adequately in terms of perception; it implies the abandon- 

lent of the attempt to define being on the basis of episte- 

[mological dependence. It is a withdrawal into the supposed 

[citadel of the self as something assured. It is a metaphysical 

^definition of being, and not an epistemological one. But 

i^hat right have we to say that only that which perceives is ? 

low does the idealist come to know that being is inseparably 

Dound up with perceiving? As soon as we give up episte- 

^mological idealism, we must admit that we know many things. 

/'hat principle enables us to assert that these things must be 

3xperiencers ? or, to put it as fairly as possible for idealism, 

low do we know that reality must be ''psychical matter of 

Ifact"? 

I have already paid my respects to this view (Chap. V). 
[t is founded on the argument from content, advanced by 
iMr. Bradley and seconded by Mr. Tdiylor, {Cf. Elements oj 



202 CRITICAL REALISM 

Metaphysics, p. 23.) These thinkers challenge an opponent 
to perform the experiment of thinking of anything whatever 
as real and then explaining what he means by its reality. Let 
us glance at Mr. Taylor's argument. What is the difference 
between the real and the imagined hundred dollars in Kant's 
famous case? They have the same qualities as contents. 
The difference lies in the fact that the real dollars may be 
the objects of direct perception, while the imaginary dollars 
cannot be. ''It is in this connection with immediate psychical 
fact that the reality of the real coins lies.'' Really I do not 
understand this. Are not the imaginary dollars objects as 
directly connected with immediate psychical fact as are the 
real dollars. Are they not more indissolubly connected than 
the real dollars? Perception is here thought of as merely a 
test of the real dollars. If they are real and not merely 
imaginary, they can be perceived. Berkeley pointed out 
that the distinction between images and things, or — to use 
James's contrast — thoughts and things, is one within expe- 
rience. This signifies that existence is a meaning which has 
grown up in our minds. But the realist would admit this 
conclusion. He claims, however, that existence does not 
mean connection with immediate psychical fact. Imaginary 
dollars do not exist except as ideas, i.e,, objects of thought 
qualified as merely mental; real dollars are thought of as 
existing outside of the mind. We have pointed out the fact 
that this meaning is not contradicted by the argument from 
content, because both percept and knowledge are within the 
field of the individual's experience. 

In conclusion, let us gather together the more important 
principles of which our investigations in this chapter have 
assured us. These may be enumerated as follows : Subjective 
idealism plays fast and loose with its principles and avoids 
solipsism only by its one-sided application of its theory of 
knowledge. The idealist is more concerned to prove that 
the non-mental cannot be known by the mental than that 
other minds cannot be known, whereas he really proves that 
objects outside of the mind of the individual cannot be literally 
apprehended. The truth to which subjective idealism has 
blindly borne witness against immediate realism is that the 



MEDIATE REALISMS 203 

world must somehow control the development of a substitute 
in the individual's mind. To panpsychism we must say that 
consciousness is real and not phenomenal but that it is not the 
whole of reality. In other words, the mind-body problem 
still remains to be solved. So far as panpsychism is built up 
on the principles of idealism, we must refuse to accept its 
epistemological foundation. Both Ward and Strong obviously 
erect their metaphysical construction upon this false founda- 
tion. Remove it, and the whole edifice comes tumbling to 
the ground. Furthermore, consciousness does not seem to be 
a stuff from which a persistent world can be made. 

But our work has been destructive only in appearance. 
The criticism we have been engaged in has welcomed the 
essential element of truth in each of these positions which we 
have been compelled to reject. The possibility of explaining 
these truths by means of a mediate or non-presentative 
epistemological realism has stood out ever more clearly. It 
is to the completion of this task that the remainder of the 
book will be devoted. 



CHAPTER IX 

IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 

IT IS beyond question the common belief to-day tha't the 
physical world is alien to consciousness. Scientists take 
this alienness for granted as a position essentially self-evident 
and not likely to be disputed by anyone who has clear ideas 
on the subject ; philosophers in the main agree with the scien- 
tists, although they are apt to qualify their agreement with the 
assertion that the physical world is merely phenomenal. By 
this qualification, they leave open a way of escape from the 
dualism which the admission of the alienness of consciousness 
to the physical implies^ Thus it is assumed that nature, so long 
as it is regarded as physical, is void of sentiency and can, under 
no conditions, develop it. In this belief is founded the mind- 
body dualism which has been such a thorn in the side of 
naturalism and which has caused so much discomfort to 
psychology and to physiology. (Mind and matter are looked 
upon as incompatibles, severely distinct from each other and 
unable to flow together and form one plastic reality. Con- 
sciousness is, as it were, homeless in a universe from which 
it is inseparable. ") Such is the view that has slowly formulated 
itself under the pressure of various motives, chief among which 
is the conception of nature urged by mechanical rationalism. 
But this dualism, which seems so natural to the thinker 
of the present, did not always exist. Nature did not seem 
from the first so thin, transparent, and alien. It took 
the Greeks some time and effort to realize the difference 
between causal activity and sense-perception. This fact 
means that for them sense-perception was immersed in the 
general activities of nature. Empedocles, in his doctrine of 
like perceived by like, made perception a property of the 
elements dependent on a relation between them. A similar 
hylo-psychism is characteristic of the outlook of Heracleitus. 
''Heracleitus, also, says the soul is the first principle, since 
it is fiery vapor from which everything else is derived." 

204 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 205 

(Aristotle, De Anima, 405a.) Even the view of Democritus, 
the first systematic materiaUst of whom we have detailed 
information, is qualified by the acceptance of conscious- 
ness as a natural feature of the cosmos. We must bear in 
mind the fact that the materialism of ancient philosophy had 
a context and toning that distinguishes it from the materialism 
of modern times. The supposed gulf that separates sentiency 
and matter was not realized; consciousness had not, as it were, * 
crystalized out from the physical. Even Aristotle's doctrine 
of sensation and of the passive reason may be considered to 
have a materialistic aspect ; all depends upon the interpretation 
which one gives to the relation of form to the potential matter. 
The soul is so knit with the body that it perishes with it. 
Strato realized this m.aterialistic moment in Aristotelianism 
and sought to release it by means of a criticism of the doctrine 
of pure form, a survival of the Platonic reificaiion of universals. 
Plotinus, the most spiritualistic of ancient thinkers, did not 
assume the existence of a hard-and-fast line between the 
Intelligible World and matter. Matter does not exist inde- 
pendently of the One; it is the lower limit of emanation, the 
field of exhaustion,^ where being passes into non-being. We 
may conclude that the mind-body dualism did not present 
itself in the same terms to the ancients as it does to the moderns. 
Why, then, has modern thought so definitely read consciousness 
out of nature? This problem has far-reaching possibilities in 
the way of a clarification of the presuppositions of our modern 
outlook. 

It is customary to begin the examination of the question 
with a statement of the position of Descartes, not because 
he originated the main features of the outlook, but because he 
formulated them so clearly. Descartes, as is well known, 
assumed the existence of two spheres, or types, of reality in our 
world, viz., extension and thought. This dualism was the 
expression of the science of his epoch, with its emphasis upon 
extension and motion. These concepts had gradually becom.e 
clear through their ability to organize the facts of science. 
For this reason they seemed to illuminate nature and render 
it transparent. The process of despi ritualizing nature had 

1 It is interesting to compare Bergson and Plotinus on this point 



I 



2o6 CRITICAL REALISM 

been begun by Kepler in his later years and had been carried 
on with increasing success by the physicists. Mathematics, 
allied with the mechanical theory, justified itself to such an 
extent that thinkers became blind to the complexity of nature. 
That this blindness was inevitable, we realize when we con- 
sider the helplessness of the preceding period. Moreover, it 
was probably helpful so far as it gave courage; but it led to 
an assurance in regard to the structure and essence of the 
physical which we should not emulate. We may say, then, 
that Descartes excluded consciousness from the physical by 
his very conception of the essence of the physical. 

Mathematical rationalism harmonized so beautifully with 
the kinetic theory of the physical processes that they united, 
as it were, defensively and offensively in the scientific move- 
ments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They 
carried along, as a matter of implication, the Cartesian theory 
of two substances alien to one another. The more dynamic 
outlook of the Nevrtonian physics demanded no essential 
modification of this presupposition. It also, as is evident in 
Locke, was dualistic. Let us indicate by an example the 
import of such a dualism. 

Physiologists frequently remark that, were the brain 
magnified many thousands of times so that even the molecular 
movements were visible, it would be impossible to perceive 
consciousness there. To this the obvious reply is that we 
can perceive only our percepts. We have here a typical 
argument in a circle. The magnifying of the brain could not 
change its constitution. Once exclude consciousness from 
your conception of physical bodies, and such a process as 
magnification cannot restore it. It produces merely a quanti- 
tative change, not a new source of insight. We have pointed 
out that the primary question is: What sort of knowledge 
can we obtain of the physical world by means of the senses? 

So long as mechanical rationalism dominated thought, 
dualism was inevitable. How, indeed, could consciousness 
have any meaning in a nature consisting of extended sub- 
stances in motion? It could be put in externally by the 
imagination, but it could not be thought into it. This concep- 
tual exclusion is the logic of what is called epiphenomenalism. 



75 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 207 

a position which makes consciousness a shadow of the 
physical. We deal with a metaphor, the work of the imagina- 
tion, and not with a harmonious conceptual system. 

But there has been a distinct reaction against mechanical 
rationalism on the part of science. For Kant there was only 
one science of nature; to-day many sciences are becoming 
relatively autonomous and trusting in experience to justify 
them. While mathematics functions in all of them so far as 
measurements are involved, this does not mean that its 
method of forming concepts is accepted as the only valid 
method. Nature is seen to be far more complex and plastic 
than was supposed. Hence, tendencies to break away from 
a dead-level view of nature and of causality are manifesting 
themselves. The old frames are being adjudged inadequate. 
Evolution is at last being taken seriously. In short, the 
concepts of extension and motion no longer light up the whole 
of nature as they were once thought to do. 

On the general philosophical side, the Cartesian rationalism 
has likewise fared badly. The epistemological difficulties it 
must face have always militated against it in the eyes of 
philosophers. Seldom, however, have the criticisms been 
supported by satisfactory constructive suggestions. We shall 
attempt to offer such suggestions on the basis of the critical 
realism we have tried to establish. If critical realism enables 
us to construct a view of the physical world which agrees with 
the results of science and yet solves the mind-body problem in 
a naturalistic way, this achievement should be of the nature of 
a supplementary proof of its correctness. 

Science gives us knowledge about the physical world, but this 
knowledge is not an intuition of the stuff or substance of the 
world. The conceptual rationalism of Descartes, upon which 
the two-substance theory was founded, assumed that the mind 
had an intuition of the veritable essence of the physical world. 
Those who have followed my. argument thus far will realize 
that this position is a rationalistic refinement upon Natural 
Realism, for which the thing itself is present to the mind to 
inspect. Instead of trying to refine upon thi-s outlook in order to 
obtain a more adequate vision of matter, we advocated a right- 
about-face and a relinquishment of the ideal. Knowledge, 



2o8 CRITICAL REALISM 

as we obtain it in science, is not an intuition of the 
substance or stuff of nature, but a knowledge of the rela- 
tive proportions, structure, relations, and functions of things. 
Space, either as perceived or conceived, is not the substance 
of the physical. In brief, we must know what sort of knowl- 
edge we obtain about nature before we come to the hasty con- 
clusion that its essence excludes consciousness. When we 
refuse to believe that nature is reproduced in knowledge so 
that we have a penetrative insight into its very stuff, must 
we not likewise hesitate to accept the dualism based on a 
false theory of the knowledge science obtains? 

We know that things are extended, that they have a 
structure, that they are in active relations with one another, 
that they can function in certain ways. Such knowledge is 
by no means to be despised. It must not, however, be mis- 
interpreted. It does not r/iean that we know the qualities of a 
hidden substance. This Lockian interpretation, which goes 
back to Greek philosophy, reflects a false point of view. 
When we say that things are actually extended, we do not 
mean that space as conceived by the mathematician is a quality 
of things. The distinction between a thing and its qualities 
grows up on the epistemological level of Natural Realism, with 
its intuitional view of knowledge, and has no place for critical 
realism. Hence, I do not hold that in science we gain knowl- 
edge of primary qualities of the physical world. Things 
move and we can measure the relative rate of motion, but 
motion is not a quality of a substance. Things exclude one 
another dynamically, but impenetrability is not a quality in 
the sense of a passive possession of an underlying substance. 
As Berkeley rightly pointed out, the word ''possession'' in 
such a connection is a mere metaphor. Thus I can accept 
the criticism which Berkeley passed upon the Lockian con- 
ception of the physical world, and still be a realist. 

We have laid this much stress upon the implications of our 
own theory of knowledge because its import is fundamental. 
Even such a critic of the purely mathematical view of the 
world as M. Bergson still looks upon knowledge as primarily 
an intuition. Both his theory of perception and his theory of 
knowledge are different from those which we have advanced. 



I 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 209 

When we come to a detailed examination of the mind-body 
problem this difiference will be seen to have its effect. ' Let us 
now look at some of the other motives which have led to the 
belief that consciousness is not native to the physical world. 

The behavior of things, it is asserted, does not demand for 
its explanation the existence of consciousness in them as an 
effective agent. Hence, we do not need to assume its presence, 
since the principle of economy rules that we should not multiply 
entities beyond necessity. 

We can reply that the behavior of men and of certain 
animals seems to require the efficacy of consciousness for their 
explanation; that this fact relieves us of the burden of proof 
and throws it on the shoulders of the advocates of the purely 
mechanical view. If a non-contradictory conception of 
nature with consciousness in it can be achieved, the naturalness 
is with such a conception. Again, the strictly mechanical 
theory has not succeeded in explaining the development and 
activities of organisms and, therefore, has not earned the 
right to sole possession. The human organism is obviously 
controlled by plans and memories, and there is no good reason 
to deny that something similar may hold of organisms less 
highly developed. Recent experiments in comparative psy- 
chology point most strongly to such a conclusion. 

A clear-sighted consideration of the argument from behavior 
is advantageous because it forces us to remark the various 
grades of organization and of conduct in things. Seeing this, 
it would be unscientific to assume that the same grade of 
consciousness and of mental control is everywhere present in 
nature, or that any consciousness is necessarily existent in 
the lower levels of nature. We shall be compelled to face the 
question of newness in evolution in this connection. It is 
one of the many weaknesses of panpsychism that it cannot 
admit that consciousness may be something relatively new in 
nature which dates from a comparatively high level of evolu- 
tionary development. But a true empiricism is not forced 
to advance beyond its data in a deductive fashion. The fault 
with much of past science and with much of past philosophy 
has been their dialectic character. They have been ruled by 
sharp antitheses, such as, mechanical and teleological, life and 



2IO CRITICAL REALISM 

lifeless, consciousness and unconsciousness. As evolution is 
taken seriously, it will modify the logic of both philosophy and 
science. Knowledge of nature is no longer to be gleaned by 
reflection on those aspects of nature which the abstracter 
sciences are occupied with to the exclusion of the more con- 
crete sciences. 

But we must obtain clear ideas of the nature of the usual 
contrasts between the physical and the psychical in order that 
they may not lead us astray. 

We shall take it for granted that we know what objects are 
physical. The denotation of the term, at least, should be 
clear. Those objects of whose existence, structure, and 
relations we learn through the sense-organs are called physical. 
Our own bodies are of course included. Much of our effort 
has concerned itself with the problem of what we should mean 
by knowledge about these objects and what the nature and 
extent of such knowledge is. 

Psychical objects, on the other hand, are more various. 
They do not possess that fundamental continuity which science 
has shown to be such a marked characteristic of the physical 
world. We may say that psychical objects are of two main 
classes: First come those which have claimed to be physical 
and whose claim has been denied ; second, those which are not 
physical and make no claim to be. Members of this second 
class do not demand place in the one real space in which 
physical things are. They do not seek inclusion in nature. 
A mathematical object, for instance, can be clearly conceived 
and analyzed, but we do not assign it a place among the things 
to which we react bodily. What, then, is the nature of this 
systematic exclusion of psychical objects from the sphere of 
physical existence ? Since it occurs in the mind, it is evidently 
not a dynamic expulsion from the space which physical things 
occupy ; rather is it the logical separation of classes of objects 
with different attributes and relations and assigned to different 
spheres of existence. In other words, psychical objects are 
not excluded from the physical world as one physical thing 
excludes another. We have to do here with a logical division, 
not with an overt, causal expulsion. The laws of behavior of 
the two realms are different, and they cannot be woven 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 211 

together into any larger, objective whole. Who can think of 
a perfect triangle jostling an electron? We are no longer 
Platonists or Pythagoreans, even though we believe in the 
applicability of mathematics to scientific data. To take 
another — and, for our present purpose, important — instance 
of this disparity, physical objects as existences control our 
percepts in large measure, whereas psychical objects have no 
such connection. 

There are certain objects, chief among which are the 
objects of religion, which claim to have dynamic connection 
with the physical world. These we cannot regard offhand as 
psychical in the sense here given to that term. It is certainly 
one of the problems of metaphysics to state what reasons there 
may be for judging that these objects are other than psychical. 
Interesting as the question is, this is not the place to consider it. 

The logic of psychical objects of the first class, that is, 
those which are excluded from the physical world, although 
they have made a claim to presence in it, is somewhat different. 
However, even they are not mechanically expelled. The 
country which Jack the Giant-Killer reached when he climbed 
the bean-stalk is such a pseudo-physical object. It strives 
towards the physical and seeks vaguely a place somewhere in 
it, but cannot for obvious reasons make good its claim. It is 
not excluded because it is psychical; it is psychical because it 
is excluded. Another example of this class is phlogiston, 
the substance by means of which the older chemists explained 
combustion. At one time its claim to be physical was allowed; 
but, as a result of the investigations of Lavoisier, it was 
finally adjudged to be merely psychical or a false hypothesis. 
Now, as soon as these objects are judged to be non-physical, 
we no longer trouble ourselves with their location. Their 
space is considered illusory, just as they are; they are not in 
the one real space because they are unreal. Real space and the 
physical go together. What this correlation signifies we shall 
indicate later, although we shall not be able to substantiate 
our conclusion to the degree we could desire. To do so would 
require an analysis of the different meanings of space. (The 
Categories will be treated in full in another volume.) Dream- 
objects and their space furnish other typical instances of this 



1/ 



2 12 CRITICAL REALISM 

exclusion from what we consider the one real space preempted 
by physical things and processes. 

But how is this classification of objects into spheres of 
existence of importance for the problem we have in hand? 
Suppose it to be granted that psychical objects qua objects do 
not exist in the one real space in which physical things exist, 
does this fact affect the question which we are considering, 
that of the presence of consciousness in physical things? 
It does so, negatively at least. The recognition of the logical 
classification of objects prevents the confusion of consciousness 
with psychical objects and the consequences for theory which 
would follow such a confusion. Consciousness is not an 
object in the usual sense of that term and, therefore, is not 
psychical when the psychical is defined as a class of objects 
distinguished from the class of physical objects. Con- 
sequently, there is no logical exclusion of it from nature. It 
does not claim a position in space as a thing in causal relation 
with other things; nor is it an object with characteristics and 
relations which make its presence in nature meaningless. We 
have seen that the assertion that a geometrical figure exists in 
the physical world is absurd. Such an assertion would be 
comparable to saying that love weighs so many pounds 
avoirdupois. But there is surely no need to dwell longer upon 
the nature and significance of this logical division of objects 
into classes, although the contrast has not infrequently been 
taken as a substantiation of the mind-body dualism. Indeed, 
it has even been taken as a proof that the distinction between 
the physical and the psychical, in the sense of consciousness, 
is purely a functional one within experience. It cannot be too 
often insisted upon that consciousness is not an object in this 
sense. In the most comprehensive sense of the term, it is an 
object — that is, it can be thought about ; but it is an object 
sui generis, which the capacity to make logical distinctions 
presupposes. 

There is another usage of the term *' psychical," which must 
be briefly examined. The psychical is the subjective; it 
consists of those feelings, ideas, and attitudes which are distin- 
guishable from the object in the act of cognition. Its correlate 
is the objective, and the contrast stressed is that between the 



y 



^ 75 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 213 

objective, be it physical or psychical, and the other pole of the 
field of the individual's experience. The objective sphere is 
the realm of objects known; the subjective, or psychical, sphere 
is that of the subject-self and its attitudes. Thus the contrast 
between the two is quite different from that between physical 
and psychical objects. The subjective qtia subjective makes 
no claim to exist in any realm of objects; the duality is not 
existential, but functional, in character. The independence 
of the object does not involve the exclusion of one class of 
objects by another class nor the existential separateness of 
kinds of being, but the freedom, so to speak, of the object 
known from the event of its being known. The antithesis 
is evidently unique and must not be confused with those which 
presuppose it. The psychical as subjective is, accordingly, 
not excluded by the physical qua physical, but by the physical 
qua objective. The same relation holds for the psychical as 
objective. Here, again, we meet with no proof that con- 
sciousness is alien to the physical. 

Yet another application of the term is to be found in recent 
logic. The psychical represents a phase in consciousness, or 
the field of the individual's experience, during which the object- 
stimulus is undergoing interpretation and reconstruction. A 
conflict with its uncertainty produces the same effect upon 
consciousness as the addition of a reagent to a test-tube of 
chemicals in solution. A ferment of activities immediately re- 
places the previous definite structure. The psychical thus cor- 
responds to a stage in a process and consists of those elements 
which are held suspended in the process of readjustment and 
which are not objectified because they have as yet no settled 
status. Such elements in this stage are, strictly speaking, 
neither objective nor subjective though they may become 
either. That which is stressed is the temporal situation of 
consciousness as a whole; the attitude is pre-cognitive, that is, 
precedes and conditions that structure of the coexistential 
dimension of the individual's field of experience in which the 
subject-self takes an attitude ^toward the sphere of objects 
known. Out of such a condition of the field of experience, 
judgments and decisions grow like crystals from the mother- 
liquor. Epistemology has much to do with the psychical in 

15 



214 CRITICAL REALISM 

this sense. The recognition that it is a stage in knowledge 
involves the relinquishment of all forms of immediate realism. 
What is important for us to note further in the present con- 
nection is that the psychical in this temporal, logical sense has 
no contrast with the physical. While the psychical exists 
in consciousness as a phase of its process, its contrasts are 
specific, and not general. It can be understood only as a stage. 
The lines of force which run through it bind it with that which 
is to come. The relation of such a psychical to the sphere of 
objects known cannot be one of logical inclusion or exclusion. 
Even to ask such a question is to ignore the universe of dis- 
course within which this kind of psychical exists. Evidently, 
the stream of consciousness swallows up this species of the 
psychical ; not until we know the relation of consciousness to 
the physical will we know its relation. 

Finally, there is the meaning of the psychical in which it 
is identified with the personal. The individual has plans 
and purposes and values which are distinctly his own. He 
knows the common objective world, but uses it as a means for 
the furtherance of his own desires and ideals. The psychical 
is now the personal reference and control; it is the self as 
opposed to, yet in a working harmony with, the not-self. 
The not-self is not necessarily the physical; indeed, it is even 
more frequently, under the conditions of modern civilization, 
the social, another person or group of persons, a law, an 
obnoxious convention. I may seek to adapt my plans to the 
prejudices of the community or to the wishes of a friend. For 
our present problem the essential to realize is the coequal 
reality of these objects, be they physical things, wishes, the 
moral tone of the community, or my own plans. It is apparent 
that it is meaningless to speak of the exclusion of the personal 
by the physical. Here our practical knowledge is a challenge to 
theory. Feelings pulsate, and the face of the world is changed ; 
ideas have hands and feet and force nature to do their will. 
The self and the not-self, the personal and the not -mine 
appear no more separated than one physical thing is separated 
from another. But how can this be ? ' ' In the widest possible 
sense,'' writes James, ''a man's Self is the sum total of all that 
he can call his; not only his body and his psychic powers, but 



I 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 215 

his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors 
and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, 
his yacht and bank-account/' To be sure, some selves are 
more modest, but the essential point is brought out by this 
quotation. It is this : The self is omnivorous and devours the 
physical equally with the undeniably psychical. The thinker 
who is seeking an existential line of demarkation between the 
self and the not-self is baffled by the seemingly capricious 
allotment of things to the two sides and by the shifting char- 
acter of the boundary between them. A little reflection will, 
however, assure us that we have here a distinction which 
exists only within the field of the individual's experience. 
There is no reason why the self should not identify itself 
with various objects which have their representatives in the 
field. This means that we take possessive attitudes toward 
things which we experience. Such an attitude does not change 
the nature of things, but does alter our relations to them and 
may thus lead to the occurrence of overt actions. What I 
mean to assert is that the contrast between the self and the 
not-self is primarily within the individual's experience and has 
existential import only so far as it is the basis for conduct, 
personal or social. We may conclude, then, that the distinc- 
tion does not coincide with that between the physical and 
consciousness and throws only a negative light upon it. 

If consciousness does not consist of psychical objects, nor 
of the subjective in contrast to the objective, nor of the pre- 
judgmental flux of experiencing, nor of the personal, what is it ? 
Is there an antithesis, still more primary, which has sometimes 
been confused with these and therefore misunderstood? 

In a preceding chapter we worked out a fairly definite 
conception of consciousness as identifiable with the whole field 
of the individual's experience. We saw that the realization of 
the unity and personal character of the total field is an achieve- 
ment made by reflection in the face of the protests of mean- 
ings such as "common," ''independent," and ''permanent." 
Mental in this inclusive sense is a new meaning which has to 
gain clearness and mastery through a reflective struggle. 
As soon as this more critical standpoint is taken, the meanings 
and relations in which the different classes of objects are 



2i6 CRITICAL REALISM 

set are, like the objects which they quahfy, seen to be mental. 
When this is done, another group of reflective meanings qualify 
the whole field of experience as such. It is judged to be a 
process whose parts are considered private and transient. It 
is this mental process which contains knowledge of existences 
independent of it. This way of approach to the total field of 
experiencing guards against the presuppositions of the sciences 
with which psychology is connected; and, when philosophy 
uses the term ''consciousness'' in relation to the mind-body 
problem, it should mean the mental in this inclusive sense in 
which it is identifiable with experiencing as a process. Let us 
keep this definition of consciousness in mind while we examine 
the contrast between consciousness and the physical which 
psychology has partly built up and partly accepted. We shall 
see that the psychologist has never freed himself completely 
from the assumptions of the other special sciences. The 
reason for this lies in the genesis of the concept of conscious- 
ness as held by the psychologist. Consciousness for him is 
virtually the inner sphere in contrast to the outer sphere. In 
the second chapter we studied the development of this 
contrast-compromise between psychology and the physical 
sciences. Consciousness, as it should be conceived by the 
philosopher with an adequate epistemology, escapes many 
of these implications, although it also has much in common 
with the consciousness of which the psychologist writes. In 
other words, the psychologist does not usually have an adequate 
epistemology, and this lack is reflected into his view of con- 
sciousness. We shall try to make this point clear in the 
next few pages. 

Wundt states that psychology ''investigates the whole 
content of experience in its relation to the subject and in its 
attributes derived directly from the subject." Psychology, 
according to Judd, has as its subject-matter "the total content 
of experience in its immediate character." The difficulty 
which faces these definitions is to determine what is meant by 
the immediate character of the total content of experience and 
what the aforesaid fjeculiar relation to the subject is. If we 
analyze Wundt 's theory, we find that he has in mind the 
distinction between knowledge, which has an evidently 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 217 

^Lobjective reference, and the flow of the individuars experience, 
^Bwhich keeps a personal connection and does not, as it were, 
Ip^crystaUize out into objects. ''Subjective and mediate knowl- 
edge are in this wise correlative ideas, in that, exactly in 
proportion as certain elements of perception are withdrawn 
into the subject, the remaining elements are regarded as parts 
of a mediate knowledge, i. e., a knowledge brought about 
by a previous logical correction.'-' {System der Philosophie, 
p. 143; quoted from Mead, The Definition of the Psy- 
chical.) The logic of the distinction between a thing and its 
perception is illustrative of what Wundt has in mind. (C/. 
Chap. II, ' ' Natural Realism and Science. ") The same material 
is thrown into two contexts with different principles and 
presuppositions. The one sphere is temporal and personal 
and somehow connected with a brain; the other is impersonal, 
spatial, and common. Feelings and volitions retain their 
personal character and are now supplemented by percepts. 
This rather composite realm is then contrasted with the 
objects of common knowledge as the sphere of consciousness. 
Psychology only carries on the distinctions of common sense. 
But a contrast higher up than perception breaks out to chal- 
lenge the adequacy of the above disjunction. Does not the 
individual think these mediate objects by means of concepts? 
|These concepts and the processes by which they are elaborated 
ikewise pass to the side of consciousness. Must we not say 
that psychology, so long as it remains a special science, does 
|not question the existence of objects which are known and with 
;which consciousness as a personal domain is contrasted, and 
hat it does not doubt that consciousness contains knowledge of 
hese objects? We have seen reason to believe that the 
sychologist is right in this attitude ; the field of the individual's 
xperience is personal, and the individual does have knowledge 
,bout existences which are not literally present in the field. 

Every special science has a view-point by means of which 
it can be defined. The subject-matter of psychology seems 
in large measure to be the total field of the individual's expe- 
rience as this is controlled by mental operations. How does 
the psychologist approach this material? 

There are at least three points of view from which the 



2i8 CRITICAL REALISM 

psychologist regards the field of experience which he terms 
consciousness. He may endeavor to analyze the more complex 
experiences into simpler ones which he treats as structural 
elements and to find the laws in accordance with which these 
elements are organized (so long as the ideal is not the 
construction of a mental chemistry, this work throws light 
upon the foundations of actual experience) ; or, he may 
be interested chiefly in the connection of consciousness with 
the organism; or, he may endeavor to study the forms of 
consciousness, their conditions, genesis, and functions. In 
the first case, we have what is usually called structural psy- 
chology. Here the psychologist concerns himself almost 
entirely with consciousness as a content open to inspection 
and analysis. In the second case, we have psycho-physics 
which treats of the correlations between consciousness, the 
body, and physical stimuli. (We shall see that much of the 
difiiculty which meets psycho-physics is due to the acceptance 
of the alienness of the psychical to the physical.) Finally, 
we have what is usually called functional psychology. The 
functionalist is dissatisfied with the limitation of psychology 
to consciousness; he wishes to see consciousness in its context. 
He is haunted with a feeling that consciousness is not ob- 
jective enough to furnish the basis for a science. Mind, he 
asserts, is known from man's activities. If we include 
language we may grant that the mind of another is inferred 
from his activities ; but it is wrong to say that mind is known 
only in that way. There must be the individual's own 
immediate experiences from which to start. I do not mean, 
of course, that the basis of the knowledge of other minds is 
consciously that of our own minds recognized as such. 
Knowledge about other minds, like knowledge about physical 
things, does not involve the reflective standpoint we have 
reached only in epistemology^ — that each mind is a sort of 
microcosm. But into this question we need not enter, since 
it has already been sufiiciently discussed. ^ The functionalist 
is, then, inclined to define psychology as the science of human 
behavior. It may be stated that this definition is too broad, 
since ethics, for example, also concerns itself with human 
behavior. We will leave the question of the mutual relations 



75 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 219 

! of sciences dealing with behavior to the sciences. What 
Interests us at present is the evident desire of the psycholo- 
igist to connect consciousness with conduct; he wishes to 
[understand human action. (Of, Pillsbury, Essentials of Psy- 
\chology, Introduction.) He is also certain that he cannot 
understand it without a knowledge of consciousness, or con- 
isciousness without a knowledge of human action. With this 
[we shall find reason to agree most heartily. The problem 
[which we are investigating concerns itself with the ''why'' of 
[this. If consciousness is alien to the physical, it is hard to 
{comprehend why consciousness and conduct apparently imply 
leach other. 

When we once realize that the psychologist is a scientist, 

[we are not surprised that he is influenced in his view of the 

[relation of consciousness and the physical by the current 

theories of science. He is also, undoubtedly, influenced by 

the traditional dualism between mind and matter considered 

as two substances. The philosopher must take up the problem 

as it is left by science and seek to understand the nature of the 

reality studied by the physical sciences and of that studied by 

psychology with a view to discovering whether they are 

existentially separate. We have already done this in large 

measure and wish to justify our epistemology by the capacity it 

[possesses to solve this age-old problem. Hard as the task is, 

it is one from which no system should shrink. Indeed, the 

mind-body problem ought to be used as a touchstone by means 

[of which to judge of the truth of an epistemology. 

The states of mind which the psychologist studies are 
[objects in consciousness which do not claim to have existence 
[elsewhere or to give information about anything but the 
[structure of the elements of consciousness, the processes which 
[occur there, and the temporal and coexistential dimensions of 
[consciousness. Fact and theory work together here as in all 
the sciences; mistakes are made and mistakes are rectified. 
I States of mind are thus psychical data which are studied in 
' order that information may be obtained of the field of the 
. individual's experiencing. That is the reality of which there 
lean be no doubt. Shall we, then, say that the states of 
mind are phenomena or appearances? Such a question is 



2 20 CRITICAL REALISM 

evidently nonsense, since the states of mind are objects in 
experience when the self takes a certain attitude called intro- 
spection. We must say that states of mind are objects in 
experience, as real as any other objects in experience, which 
are used to give us information about the total field of the 
individual's experience or consciousness. The psychologist 
in pursuit of this purpose analyzes characteristic group after 
characteristic group, the sensational, the affective, the conative, 
the ideational, the subjective attitudes, and so on, and seeks to 
realize how all these exist together in the actual flow of expe- 
riencing. He does not deal with appearances, but with 
realities. What we must distinguish, however, is the knowl- 
edge he thus achieves, from the field of an individual's expe- 
riencing as this exists while the individual is extrospective. 
To conclude, the distinction between appearance and reality 
is false if applied to psychology. 

But we have already come to the same conclusion for the 
other sciences. Nowhere in science does the contrast between 
appearance and reality have meaning. The sciences seek to 
know about things and processes. This knowledge cannot be 
said, however, to be an appearance of that which is known. 
Thus the distinction between appearance and reality has no 
meaning for knowledge and should not be transferred to it 
from the domain of perception. 

What are the characteristics of consciousness as brought 
out by psychology? There are at least four which are impor- 
tant for our problem. Consciousness is personally toned; 
it is synthetic; it is not directly conserved; it is not a substance. 
Let us examine these points briefly. 

This first characteristic has been discussed in detail in the 

chapter on the Advance of the Personal. We saw there that 

>^ a concept, no matter how impersonal it may seemingly be, 

\ is the thought of an individual and is bathed in a tide of 

\ feelings, purposes, and desires. Consciousness clings to a 

personal mooring. It has none of the supposed cosmopolitan 

traits of energy. Mental pluralism is the law in this domain, 

and each stream of consciousness has an inner continuity, or 

unity. It is true that individual minds may break down and 

dissociation result in the formation of relatively distinct 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 221 

streams which coexist; but the fields of consciousness which 
are thus formed in connection with one brain have their own 
inner unity. The question of multiple personality leads us 
to the second trait of consciousness. 

/ Consciousness is essentially synthetic. I mean by this 
that any experience links itself or tends to link itself with all 
that is kindred to it. Stimuli within the field come together, 
and the response which interprets and organizes them must 
take them all into account. In this way the material from 
the various senses is organized into thing-experiences, and 
these again are associated with ideas by means of which they 
are recognized and interpreted, j Consciousness is alive with 
convection currents which bring every part to bear upon every 
other part. Certain of these currents are activities of which 
we can become conscious and in which we can perceive the 
work of synthesis. And where ordinary introspection fails, 
experimental conditions enable us to penetrate beneath what is 
usually given and see the same synthetic tendencies weaving 
the elements of the individual's field of consciousness. The 
study of abnormal minds has, moreover, confirmed the impor- 
tance of this trait by showing what results when the brain's 
energy is lessened and all the consciousness in one brain is 
not drawn into one unified and controlled whole. 
r'^ Again, the field of the individual's experience is continually 
Jphanging. The very terms, states, pulses, events, experiences, 
ywhich are applied to parts of the field show a recognition of the 
Ciiansient nature of consciousness. Here, if an3rwhere, is the 
flux so celebrated by Heracleitus. Consciousness is a stream ^ 
whose waters sink into its bed, yet the stream flows on-v 
ward; it is a continual birth and also a continual death. In 
other words, consciousness is not directly conserved in the 
sense that the same experience presents itself over again in^ 
the field. The constructions of the present which we call mem- 
ories tend to make us forget this fragility and essential mor- \ 
tality of consciousness. We do not always realize that what \ 
we assign to the past is a creature of the present. When '■ 
we say that consciousness is only indirectly conserved, we 
mean that our present experience would be different were it 
not for what we experienced in the past ; yet the past is not 



222 CRITICAL REALISM 

revived in a literal sense./ The psychologist can explain the 
perceptions and judgments of an individual only in the light of 
his previous perceptions and judgments ; continuity and growth 
are the main characteristics of mind. But consciousness can- 
not be identified with mind for this reason. For it there is 
an ever-changing now. The mind is like the score of some 
piece of music which the artist is seeking to perfect ; conscious- 
ness, like the instrumentation of parts of it from time to time. 
The last general characteristic of consciousness is, at first 
glance, negative rather than positive. It is, as we have said, 
not a substance. The categories which we apply to states of 
consciousness — and hence to consciousness as a stream — 
are negative in form because mankind has been chiefly inter- 
.ested in the physical things which form the environment to 
which the individual must react rightly in order to live. Man 
acts before he introspects. This is the reason why Natural 
Realism is the outlook of common sense. Man is interested 
primarily in things and does not stop to consider whether they 
are distinct from his thing-experiences. \ Presence is tested 
by organic reaction ; presence to the organism is not differ- 
entiated from presence to the subject-self. The self is, as it \ 
were, immersed in the body and sees with it as it reacts, v 
''AH roots, i,e,y all the material elements of language, are 
expressive of sensuous impressions, and of sensuous impressions 
only; and as all words, even the most abstract and sublime, 
are derived from roots, comparative philology fully endorses 
the conclusions arrived at by Locke." (Max Miiller, Lectures on 
the Science of Language, Bk. II, pp., 372, 373; quoted from 
Hoffding, Outlines, p. 2.) Thus man worked gradually from 
the outside inward. This dominance of the concepts formed 
on things is especially apparent in the philosophy of Kant. 
Because the categories of the understanding are not applicable 
to the data of the ** inner sense,'' psychology cannot be a 
science. It is gradually dawning upon thinkers that the 
categories which are applicable to the physical world, as that 
world is known through the natural sciences, are not applicable to 
consciousness, but that this divergence is not a proof that 
consciousness cannot be known. ^ The material is different and 

iDoes not Bergson tend to exalt the psychological categories, thus committing the reverse 
fallacy? 



/5 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 223 

expresses itself in different terms. It is wrong, therefore, to 
hold that the one set of categories is truer or more fundamental 
than the other. Each is relative to its subject-matter. Har- 
mony between them will come only as a result of the recognition 
of this fact. Our main purpose is to show how such harmony 
can be attained. 

Since man came to understand consciousness after he had 
analyzed the world of physical things as known by means of 
) perception, the concepts he employed to think it were natur- 
^-^^^y negative in form. Consciousness is the incorporeal, the fy^ 
unextended, the unsubstantial, the transient, the knower as 
distinguished from that which is known. Such at least are the 
vague contrasts which most readily presented themselves. 
As more became known about it — especially its correspondence 
with the brain — the more the wonder grew how it could be 
related to that which was substantial. The most tenuous 
and intangible of natural phenomena, as these appeared to 
common sense, were employed as quarries from which to obtain 
similes for this connection. Consciousness is a lambent flame, 
a magnetic field, an aura, potential energy. It plays about the 
brain as St. Elmo's fire about the masts of ships. It is an 
epiphenomenon like the shadows which accompany an engine 
in motion. Such attempts at description remind us of the 
identification by the ancients of mind with the fire-atoms, the 
subtlest, smoothest, and most penetrating of all atoms. But 
the employment of images is not enough; it represents the stage 
of wonder at a necessary differentiation. We must think the 
contrast and know what it involves. 

The other characteristics of consciousness which we have 
examined should help us to give content to this contrast which 
appears to the scientist and, therefore, to the thinker at first, 
as a negation which he cannot comprehend. I shall be 
compelled to use technical terms in order to pass from imagina- 
tion to thought. Consciousness is clearly a variant, and not a \ 
substance. It does not persist through change. Hence, it 
cannot be identified with the physical as such. It may pos- 
sibly act in things, but not on things as one physical existent acts 
on another. In other words, its action cannot be mechanical. 



224 CRITICAL REALISM . 

If it is connected with the brain as a physical existent, it 
must be thought of as of the brain ^ not as one physical 
thing is encapsulated in another, but, rather, ^s a light is in a 
diamond or a pain in the hand. / Here, again, we have only 
similes ; however, these are useful to free the imagination from 
the tyranny of space-perception so that it will not oppose 
thought too zealously. Perhaps there is not so much diffi- 
culty in thinking consciousness rightly when we make an 
effort; the danger lies rather in a lapse from the correct view 
at the critical moment. Many excellent thinkers have shown 
how easy it is, when the motives are strong, to regard con- 
sciousness as a most subtle and intangible material or sub- 
stance, yet a material notwithstanding its delicacy and 
tenuousness. Panpsychism is obviously guilty of this applica- 
tion to consciousness of inapplicable categories. It is forced 
to employ practically the same categories in thinking this 
mind-stuff as in thinking matter of a supposedly physical 
nature. The panpsychist does not like the matter which the 
crude materialist or the more naive type of scientist presents 
him with ; moreover, he has a theory of knowledge which assures 
him that he cannot know any existent that is different from 
consciousness. How easy it is under these circumstances to 
make a matter out of consciousness. Certain panpsychists 
are, however, frank enough to acknowledge the difficulties 
which ensue. ''The trouble is, that consciousness appears so 
very much simpler a thing than the brain-process. When 
we reflect, the disparity between the two seems immense : the 
brain-process a concourse of moving molecules inconceivable 
in its complexity; consciousness a tangle of half-a-dozen 
feelings, or at most a mosaic of a few hundred.'' (Strong, 
Why the Mind Has a Body, p. 353.) In short, consciousness 
and the physical world simply cannot be flatly identified. 
Such an identification would be the turning of our back upon 
the distinction which makes a solution possible. It would 
imply the invalidity of the knowledge which science achieves 
of the physical world. 

A still subtler form of this mistake is to be found in 
the transmission view of the mind-body relation advocated 
by James. (''Human Immortality," IngersoU Lecture; and 



r 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICALf 225 



A Pluralistic Universe. ' ') Consciousness is thought of as a stuff 
existent in a vast reservoir independent of the physical world. 
For some reason it flows thence into certain accredited parts 
of nature. In these it is integrated and disintegrated and 
appears finally in the form in which we experience it. In the 
first place, we must not be led by the term ''transmission" into 
the supposition that we have in this theory a scientific explana- 
tion. The word is merely a metaphor. Nor can we under- 
stand how the brain gives individuality to this impersonal 
stuff which sifts through it. Does the brain constitute a mold 1 
into which consciousness is poured like bronze into a pattern?! 
Such a mechanical view would of course be rejected with scorn, 
but it suffices to indicate the difficulties which are implicit in ^ 
the position J How, again, does a consciousness coming from 
outside enable us to know the physical world or to assist the 
organism to adapt itself to its environment? This theory 
treats consciousness as a substance which can be divided and 
compounded and thus assigns it a semi-atomic constitution. 
The interesting feature is, that James wrote an excellent 
criticism of the mind-stuff hypothesis in The Principles of 
Psychology, yet, in A Pluralistic Universe, a later book, he 
declared for a view essentially open to all the objections he 
had previously formulated so clearly. The reason for this 
change of front was his belief that he had to choose between 
the acceptance of a soul and some form of the mind-stuff 
theory. Certainly, this would be an ungrateful dilemma; 
but, like most dilemmas, the disjunction is incomplete. There 
are other possibilities. Until these are known to be exhausted, 
we need not resign ourselves to a Hobson's choice. The space 
which we have at our command will not permit an adequate 
study of the various forms of the transmission theory. At 
best, we shall be able to point out some of the difficulties which 
confront the spiritualism of M. Bergson, who has worked 
out in more detail the dualistic conception of the relation of 
mind and body. Our purpose is, however, positive rather 
than critical; we wish to show the epistemological and logical 
satisfactoriness of a more flexible naturalism. 

We are now in a better position to seek an answer to the 
question which led to these analyses. Does the physical world 



226 CRITICAL REALISM 

exclude consciousness? We have given the reason why this 
aHenness has been acknowledged by men of science. It was 
the result of the belief that the essence of the physical is given 
in the attributes, extension and motion. A quotation from 
the famous Belfast Address of Tyndall will, I think, make 
clear what the scientist has in mind when he asserts that 
consciousness and the brain are incompatible. **We can 
trace the development of a nervous system and correlate with 
it the parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see 
with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But 
we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend 
the connection between them . . . There is no fusion 
possible between the two classes of facts — no motor energy 
in the intellect of man to carry it without logical rupture 
from the one to the other.'' What is it that Tyndall has in 
mind? Evidently a deduction of one class of facts from the 
other. He desired that the two classes of facts should fuse. 
But that is obviously nonsense. In both we have knowledge of 
the real world ; it does not follow, however, that one is deducible 
from the other. All that we have a right to demand is that 
they be referable to the same reality without logical conflict. 
In the book entitled Fragments of Science, Tyndall makes the 
same demand that we be able to pass by reasoning from the 
knowledge of the brain acquired by physicists and physiologists 
to consciousness. *'The passage from the physics of the brain 
to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.'' 
Has not the problem of the mind-body relation been wrongly 
put ? When we assert that consciousness is not alien to the 
physical world, we do not mean that feeling can be deduced by 
thought from a motion or that a motion can become a feeling. 
Yet the dualism which science thinks it proves is founded on 
the negation of such absurdities. The demand itself seems 
strange when we find a chemist asserting that the qualities 
of chemical substances are not deducible from the quantitative 
aspects which the chemist measures. (Ostwald, UEvolution 
d'une Science — La Chimie.) It is extremely interesting to 
discover that, in spite of his false assumption that conscious- 
ness should be deducible from the knowledge of the physical 
which the sciences founded on external perception acquire, 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 227 

Tyndall confesses to a belief in the potency of matter to 
produce every form and quality of life. This confession is 
evidence that the physicist is not so certain as he at first seemed 
to be of the inner nature of matter. 

Philosophy has been, as a rule, harsh and dictatorial in its 
treatment of materialism. Modern philosophers have usually 
felt themselves to be defenders of the ideal against the cold 
naturalism of science. This is the case with even such a 
veracious thinker as Lange. (History of Materialism.) 
The primacy of consciousness for theory of knowledge is used 
as a dialectical instrument to bewilder where it does not 
convince. The result is that the impartial observer is im- 
pressed with the belief that the victory of philosophy over 
materialism is more a semblance than a reality. Should not 
philosophy have examined the concept of matter more closely 
and taken into consideration the motives and reasons which 
have led so many earnest minds to materialism or semi- 
materialism? The common error of materialists and anti- 
materialists alike is to commence their thinking with a stereo- 
typed idea of the physical world. The result has been 
a series of barren, wrangling controversies in which the 
idealist has demonstrated amid plaudits ''that Materialism, 
in attempting to deduce the mental from the physical, puts 
into the conclusion what the very terms have excluded from 
the premises.'' (Lewes, The Physical Basis of Mind ^ Preface.) 
But must these terms be so conceived that the conclusion is 
excluded from the premises? This is the real point at issue. 
Philosophers should not consider it their sufficient duty to 
point out dialectical errors, but should assist in the construc- 
tion of as adequate ideas of nature as possible. Perhaps the 
physicist has had a wrong conception of the extent and 
nature, of the knowledge he achieves. It may be true 
knowledge of nature yet not complete knowledge of nature. 

True knowledge may exclude that which claims to be 
further knowledge if an incongruity or contradiction would 
ensue from its acceptance. Does, perchance, the alienness of 
consciousness to the physical mean that the two are incon- 
gruous? I think that it is often supposed that this is the 
situation. It is asserted to be the height of absurdity to 



228 CRITICAL REALISM 

seek to harmonize things so different from each other as con- 
sciousness and the physical. Can you measure love by a / 
yardstick or weigh intelligence? it is asked. I remember that/ 
a prominent theologian, the president of a theological semi/ 
nary, is said to have silenced some dogmatic materialists 
by such an interrogation. And at first glance, the objection 
seems final. But is not the old fallacy at work here which we 
exposed in the foregoing paragraphs ? Love is not a physical 
thing, nor is intelligence phyvsical. Love is an emotion and, 
therefore, of the nature of consciousness. We have seen, 
however, that consciousness is not a substance and does not lay 
claim to be a thing among other things in a spatial and causal 
connection. It is, therefore, nonsense to apply the same 
categories to consciousness as to the physical world. The 
physical world may be extended and its parts have weight 
and yet be conscious, that is, have consciousness within it 
as a part of its nature. The judgment of incongruity rests 
on a misunderstanding. When we assert that consciousness 
is not alien to the physical as an existent, we do not mean 
that the same categories are applicable to the physical as known 
by the physical sciences and to consciousness, or that the physical 
as it is conceived by common sense or the naive scientist is 
logically classifiable with the psychical as this is conceived by 
common sense. The logic of classes of objects as conceived 
by common sense leads to incongruity. Thus incongruity is a 
result of a point of view and is no more final than the point of 
view itself. What we wish to do is to get back of this super- 
ficial view of the physical which identifies the physical with the 
knowledge we have gained of it through the external sciences. 
Does, then, the alienness of consciousness refer to a contra- 
diction? If so, there must be some property of the physical 
which contradicts consciousness so that it is impossible to 
assert them both of the same thing. The argument is some- 
what as follows: Just as you cannot think a geometrical 
figure as round and square at the same time and have a self- 
consistent thought, so you cannot assert consciousness of a 
subject which possesses this other property. This is the 
character of the objection advanced by Busse against material- 
ism. ''Psychical and physical characteristics exclude one 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 229 

another; spaceless thoughts and feelings which are neither 
thick nor thin, neither long nor short, neither round nor 
angular, neither moved nor unmoved, can in no way be the 
characteristics of a spatial-material thing/' (Zeitschrift fi.r 
Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik, Band 114-115.) It will 
be well to point out, first of all, that the problem is not whether 
the properties of the physical as known conflict with the 
properties of consciousness. We are not trying to identify 
two subjects with each other, but are trying to enlarge our 
conception of the one so that it will include the other without 
a logical conflict. When Busse asserts that feelings, which 
are spaceless, cannot be the characteristics of a spatial 
thing, he evidently thinks that the assignment of feelings 
implies the proposition that things must be spatial and 
spaceless at the same time. This is a mistake. As classes 
thought about by scientists, the physical and the psychical 
have contradictory attributes. This fact must not be 
confused with the question whether the physical as an 
existent can absorb consciousness. When we come to 
treat of the relation of consciousness to the brain in a more 
detailed way, the difference which I have in mind will stand 
out more clearly. Consciousness will be seen to be not an 
external attribute, but a part of reality. Of course this 
position is not exactly like materialism, but it is nearer to it 
than to idealism. Were I inclined to lay much stress upon 
the argument advanced by Busse, I would point out the fact 
that qualities such as color are assigned by common sense to 
physical things, although they are spaceless. Does not Hume 
somewhere raise the question of how savors and perfumes are 
in things as their qualities? All that logic enables us to say is, 
that contradictory attributes shall not be predicated of the 
same thing and that classes with contradictory attributes 
cannot be identified; it does not give us the right to say that 
the attribute of an attribute must be uncontradictory of an 
associated attribute. The assertion that matter is conscious 
under certain circumstances does not, because consciousness 
is unextended, confiict with the assertion that matter is ex- 
tended. This is an affair of logic. Later we shall see that, 
in a very real sense, consciousness is extended. This 

16 



230 CRITICAL REALISM 

statement will seem absurd to those who think that only 
things can be extended. I can only ask them to have patience 
until I can take up the topic. It is interesting that Locke saw 
no contradiction in the association of consciousness with 
matter, although he believed that matter is evidently in its own 
nature void of sense and thought. {Essay, Bk. IV, Chap. III.) 
I think that we must agree with Locke as to the absence of 
contradiction. 

If there be no incongruity or contradiction in the assign- 
ment of consciousness to the physical, the only possible reason 
which could prevent such a reference would be a knowledge 
that nature is void of consciousness. We have seen that this 
is the usual view, and it is certainly that held by Locke. But 
how can anyone prove that the physical is necessarily void of 
consciousness unless its presence involves a contradiction? 
And Locke himself has pointed out the empirical character of 
our knowledge of coexistence and repugnancy to coexistence. 
All any advocate of the alienness to consciousness of the 
physical can do is to state that his concept of the physical does 
not include either consciousness or the potentiality of con- 
sciousness, which statement would be interesting as a fact, but 
would scarcely prove anything. 

But there is another aspect of this problem which is of 
special importance because it brings to the front the implica- 
tions of change. The full treatment of change will come 
under the category of time (a category to be analyzed in a 
succeeding volume); however, certain points can be touched 
upon now. What we wish to call attention to is the tendency 
to disregard the penetrative workings of change in nature. 
Locke rests his case against materialism seemingly upon a 
denial of any real change in the physical. {Ihid, Bk. IV., 
Chap. X.) What is wholly void of knowledge cannot produce 
a knowing being. This is as impossible as ''that a triangle 
should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones.'' 
A similar protest against the appearance of consciousness 
in a world evolved from nebulous matter is often voiced by 
believers in continuity. Does the principle of continuity ex- 
clude newness in nature? Let us examine Locke's argument 
first, and afterwards analyze the principle of continuity. 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 231 

Locke's argument is of a logical character and is, in essen- 
tials, the traditional one employed against naturalism. There 
lurks in it a subtle fallacy founded on a misinterpretation of 
the negative and on a mathematical conception of the nature 
of the physical. Is the physical known to be senseless? That 
is, can senselessness be regarded as a positive characteristic 
which excludes sentiency as roundness precludes squareness? 
We can undoubtedly state that a mass of matter in a nebulous 
condition is not conscious, but this assertion must not be 
interpreted to mean that it possesses unconsciousness ; that is, 
that it has an essence alien to consciousness. But such is the 
conception implied in Locke's comparison. A triangle is an 
object with determinate characteristics; its essence is laid bare 
in the definition. When it loses this it ceases to be a triangle ; 
it has outraged its nature. We will acknowledge with Locke 
that this feat is impossible, for the simple reason that mathe- 
matical objects do not change. Time does not enter into their 
nature. They are conceptual constructions determined by the 
character of conceptual space. Is matter something logically 
fixed with its nature determined once and for all as a triangle 
is ? Such a logical rationalism has more than once dominated 
man's view of reality. In such a world, reason can disregard 
Time as a blustering intruder who arrogates to himself more 
than is his due. Change is not penetrative for this outlook. 
But is nature logically determined as a mathematical ob- 
ject or a mathematical system is? Philosophy has no right 
to assert it unless it can be proved or unless its assumption 
enables the thinker to organize experience in a way not other- 
wise possible. Let us come back to the question of the 
interpretation of the negative. Is not a negative which cannot 
be transformed into a positive term merely expressive of the 
absence of a certain positive term? It does not involve 
the assertion of a contradictory positive term. Perhaps I can 
make my argument clearer by means of an example. If I 
assert that a certain liquid is colorless, do I mean more than 
that it does not have any color? I do not assert the presence 
of an attribute which is contradictory of color. Suppose I 
take it for granted that an object must have some color; then, 
if I say that an object is not red, I know that it must be brown 



232 CRITICAL REALISM 

or yellow or purple, or what not. A negative in this case 
implies some positive of the same class. Thus a negative 
varies with the context. If the context is disjunctive, the 
negative is, implicitly at least, a positive; if the context is not 
disjunctive, this is not the case. Thus Locke argues that, 
because matter is at one time void of knowledge, it must 
always remain so. Voidness of knowledge is taken as a 
positive characteristic defining matter which excludes knowl- 
edge, even as the equality of the angles of a triangle to two 
right angles excludes equality to three right angles. In the 
case of the triangle, the system is such that there is no negative 
which is not implicitly a positive. However, when we turn 
to the physical world as an evolving process we realize that 
absences are not positive characteristics which hinder the 
production of new positive ones. Nature is not a geometrical 
system, and negatives are empirical interrogations founded 
on the absence of some attributes and the presence of others. 
Nature moves, not from negative to positive or from posi- 
tive to negative, but from one positive condition to another; 
and it is probable that these changes are more gradual than 
our concepts are capable of expressing. Thought cannot 
dictate to nature, yet nature dictates to thought. It does 
not pass from privation to possession, but from possession to 
possession. 

While we are touching upon the logic of the negative, it 
may be worth our while to note another attempt to apply it 
against consciousness. Rehmke argues that consciousness 
cannot be an intermittent characteristic of the physical, because 
reality shows us no instance where a special characteristic of a 
body vanishes without another of the same kind taking its 
place. A color always replaces another color. But, as Busse 
points out, when a body loses a straight motion, it does not 
have to move in some other way; it can become motionless, 
Thus motion would be intermittent. But, so far as we know, 
consciousness is sui generis, and this type of argument does not 
touch our problem very deeply. It is evident, I think, that 
formal logic cannot prove that nature is alien to consciousness. 
Experience alone can decide the question. 

We are now prepared to discuss the principle of continuity 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 233 

in its relation to the presence of consciousness in the world. 
The majority of thinkers appeal to this principle as though it 
were susceptible of only one interpretation. Thus James 
asserts that ' ' If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in 
some shape must have been present at the very origin of 
things." {Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 149.) This state- 
ment arises out of his belief that the brain is nothing but the 
selfsame atoms which make the nebula, jambed and temporarily 
caught in peculiar positions. For this view the relations between 
the atoms are external, and organizations which are more than 
arrangements do not exist for nature. I, on the contrary, 
take evolution to mean the development of wholes which are 
not merely collections of units. For the mechanical rationalist, 
there is nothing new in the brain except the rapidity with which 
the atoms strike one another and the paths traversed by the 
moving particles. But these could supposedly be deduced 
from the past and are not, therefore, considered new. We 
have in this outlook the application of the mechanical form 
of the principle of ground and consequent. By the very nature 
of the system, the principle of sufficient reason is changed into 
that of sameness. Mechanical rationalism has a transpar- 
ent nature, and this transparency precludes newness. Thus 
Strong, who follows James, states that ''The worst difficulty of 
materialism was to explain how in the midst of a purely 
material world such things as minds could ever arise.'' {Why 
the Mind Has a Body, p. 292; italics mine.) The argument 
is evidently of this character: Granted the alienness of the 
physical and consciousness, reason cannot connect them; and 
so the appearance of consciousness is inexplicable and against 
the principle of sufficient reason. But we have tried to 
show that there is no warrant for the assumption that 
consciousness is alien to the physical; and we must not 
confuse rationality and sameness. I see no justification 
for the rather current position that intelligence is limited 
to the connection of the same with the same in series. All 
depends on the nature of the system within which intelligence 
is at work. A true empiricism, on the other hand, recognizes 
that newness occurs in nature as it does in our experience. 
The conditions of the rise of the new should be investigated. 



234 CRITICAL REALISM 

but this does not mean that the new can be reduced to the old 
in any absolute sense. Thus the biologist sees the rise of new 
organs in the animal kingdom but his explanation of them 
consists in showing what function they perform and how this 
function is demanded by the relation of the organism to the 
environment. If evolution is to be taken seriously by science, 
the principle of continuity must not be taken to exclude 
newness. I must confess, then, that the assertion of James 
that ' ' If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some 
shape must have been present at the very origin of things" 
seems to me a bit of dogmatism. 

It is interesting that Bradley does not feel the same objec- 
tion to the origin of consciousness from what we usually speak 
of as physical conditions. ''We might have at one moment 
a material arrangement and at the next moment we might 
find that this arrangement was modified, and was accom- 
panied by a certain degree of soul. Even if this as a fact 
does not happen, I can find absolutely no reason to doubt 
that it is possible, nor does it seem to me to clash with our 
preceding view.'' {Appearance and Reality, p. 337, second 
edition.) Of course, Bradley must not be considered a material- 
ist because of his denial of the dogmatic use made by some 
writers of the principle of continuity. For him the relation 
of mind and body is, in its essence, inexplicable because the 
two are not realities; they are phenomenal ^series artificially 
abstracted from the whole, and each is self-contradictory 
{ihid, p. 336). I, on the other hand, regard our knowl- 
edge to hold, not of phenomena, but of reality. Hence, the 
assignment of consciousness to an evolved physical organism 
is regarded by me as a solution of the problem, so far as meta- 
physics is concerned. There are, however, certain further 
difficulties of a more specific character which must be cleared 
away before the absorption of consciousness by the physical 
world can be thought without seeming contradiction. 

It may be asserted that what is active cannot also be con- 
scious. Since, however, it is the very nature of consciousness 
according to modern views to be associated with, and expressed 
in, conduct, there can be no difficulty as regards activity in 
general. The objection constantly raised concerns a supposed 



75 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 235 

divergence in the type of activity characteristic of each. 
Consciousness, it is said, is purposive and recognizes values, 
while the physical is mechanical and is blind to worth. Many 
of the keenest thinkers proclaim this contrast to be ultimate 
and irreducible. Busse, for instance, maintains that it is impos- 
sible to give the physical correlate for all psychical processes. 
The mechanization of the psychical processes is the logical 
result of the attempt to find parallels. The attitude taken 
by Ziehen {Outlines of Physiological Psychology) or the 
special-science view of psychology adopted by Miinsterberg 
is the result of the pressure exerted by the exact sciences. 
Granted the validity of the usual mechanical theories of 
association on the neurological side, and it certainly seems 
impossible to understand how there can be correlates of 
judgment. Wundt places stress on values, but I see no reason 
why judgments of values should be regarded as more difficult 
to explain than other kinds of judgments. (Wundt, Phil- 
osophische Studien, Band 10.) May not the difficulty be that 
Psychology has been too submissive to the other sciences? 
Instead of accepting neurological theories obviously domi- 
nated by ideals unsympathetic with her material, she should 
have insisted on the probability that association involves 
more than the mechanical hypothesis of pervious paths 
and drainage accounts for. That a science should evis- 
cerate itself because of undue modesty is not a good thing, 
unless it be known that it really has no subject-matter of its 
own on which it can rely. I see no reason why psychology 
should not dictate to neurology or, at least, make suggestions 
to it. Only through the relative autonomy of the sciences 
can adequate concepts be developed. Thus we may conclude 
that only he who can prove that the physical, no matter how 
it is organized, must act mechanically has a right to assert 
that consciousness and the physical conflict irreconcilably 
in their type of activity. But, if evolution is more than 
appearance, it surely implies a change in the mode of activity 
of parts of nature; that is, nature is not a dead-level system. 
Instead, it develops grades of causal activity as it evolves. 
The full treatment of this view must be postponed until 
the category of causality is examined. (See, however, a 



236 CRITICAL REALISM 

brief resume of the position in the Journal of Philosophy, 
Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. VI., p. 323.) Suffice it 
to assert that there is no adequate reason to deny that the 
physical world rises to the level of purposive activity, and that 
consciousness is an immanently produced variant in such 
a physical world. 

Let us continue to remember that the physical sciences 
which investigate nature on the basis of our thing-experiences 
cannot perceive values. That does not enter into their 
material. Even when they consider the conduct of a man, they 
can only judge that his behavior is as though he gave heed to 
values. To talk of the physical world as blind to values 
would be justified only if organisms acted as stones do. Surely 
man is a part of nature. Only the thinker who degrades 
nature finds naturalism degrading. Much of the difficulty 
that is being found with the view that every process in con- 
sciousness has its physical correlate comes from the special 
turn given to it by parallelism. Hence, we must examine 
parallelism. 

Parallelism has two meanings, the empirical and the 
metaphysical. The metaphysical goes back to Spinoza. 
Mind and body are supposed to be two aspects of the same 
substance. To every soul there is a body and to every body 
a soul. Thus, there must be the most minute correspondence 
between these attributes, since they are grounded in one 
substance. To the Spinozistic position, we can but reply 
that it has insuperable difficulties to face and does not seem 
to agree with the empirical facts so far as we can determine 
them. How are these attributes related to the one substance ? 
As attributes, why should they correspond in the peculiar 
way that mind and body do ? Does it not further involve the 
extension of mind to all parts of nature in a purely deductive 
fashion ? We remember that the theory of Spinoza was 
founded on the two-substance theory of Descartes, and we have 
already denied the validity of the Cartesian formulation. 
The essence of the physical is not extension. Instead of 
having two apparently alien realities to unite by making 
them attributes of an unknown substance,- — a formal or 
logical union at its best, — we have challenged the premises. 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 237 

or matrix, out of which Spinoza's position was developed.^ 
When we come to examine modern metaphysical parallelism 
more closely, we begin to wonder what it means. Is it more 
than a metaphor? To speak of consciousness and the body 
as two sides of the same thing, or as comparable to two lan- 
guages, or to the concave and convex sides of a sphere is to 
appeal to imagination. Does it mean that the elements and 
relations of one correspond, point for point, with the elements 
of the other? If so, the mind is a duplication of the brain in 
another stuff. You simply have two stuffs where one would 
do, and nature has sinned in its inmost depths against the 
principle of economy. So far as parallelism condemns inter- 
action, it stands for the independence of each separate realm 
and for the claim that the physical can be explained only 
through the physical, and the psychical through the psychical. 
Moreover, it holds that such explanation is satisfactory to 
the reason. To this construction, it should be replied that 
consciousness is not a stuff or substance. This we have shown 
in some detail. Therefore, it is nonsense to speak of the 
elements and relations of the one as corresponding to the 
elements and relations of the other. It is of the very nature 
of consciousness to be temporary and unconserved. To this 
the advocate of parallelism may reply that consciousness is 
like an electric illumination which temporarily takes on the 
form of the letters which the bulbs spell. But this is to 
acknowledge that consciousness comes and goes. The con- 
sequence is, that reason asks why it comes and goes and why it 
takes this form. If mind is distinct from consciousness and 
is a stuff, it is unknown except through consciousness. It 
performs the function of a soul only in so far as it produces 
consciousness and is open to all the epistemological objections 
that have discredited that entity. And if mind is different 
from consciousness and is unknown, why not call it matter 
and escape an uneconomical duplication. In truth, we move 
here in a mass of concepts and dilemmas which have no episte- 
mological foundation. Parallelism belongs to pre-Kantian 
metaphysics. 

i"The one substance which is supposed to manifest itself in two attributes, the physical 
and the psychical, is nothing but a word which expresses the desire to escape from dualism, but 
which does not really bridge the gulf for our understanding." (Stumpf, Leib iind Seele, p. i6; 
quoted from McDougall, Body and Mind, p. i6o.) 



238 CRITICAL REALISM 

Let us, then, keep to consciousness. Since conscious- 
ness is given, we can ask ourselves whether it contains 
elements and relations corresponding to the atoms and mole- 
cules or electrons or cells of which science speaks. To ask 
the question is to answer it. The empiricist knows that 
continuity and wholeness is the characteristic of consciousness. 
Granted the usual mechanical view of the physical world, the 
parallelism of consciousness to it is absurd. Yet there is 
a sense in which the demand for parallelism has meaning: 
consciousness must fit into the physical. Later we shall show 
that it does fit into the physical and is absorbed by it. But 
with such an absorption, parallelism disappears, since dualism, 
which is its premise, is forsaken. Again, as interactionists 
have shown, the physical, as this is conceived by scientists, 
cannot account for all events in its domain. Only he who 
is ridden by a dogma can believe that the acts of a man are 
explained by physics and chemistry. Let us stop a moment 
to consider this point before we examine the theory of inter- 
action. 

There is an order in human conduct which demands 
explanation. All that occurs in nature involves quantities 
and is so far known by science; all brain-events involve 
chemical processes and are theoretically knowable by chem- 
istry. But these chemical events have a context of conditions ; 
and the question is, whether or not this context which acts as a 
control is properly reducible to a series connected only exter- 
nally. Until organic chemistry faces this problem of control, 
it cannot be said to deal adequately with the peculiar 
characteristic of behavior. As a special science, has it not 
limited itself ? Therefore, it has not the right to dictate to 
biology. In short, the categories of the special sciences 
reflect their point of view. 

We criticised parallelism of a metaphysical sort mainly 
because of its meaninglessness. If mind and body merely 
duplicate each other and both are capable of doing what the 
other does, their coexistence is a marvel. Moreover, meta- 
physical parallelism is deductive in character and goes far 
beyond what experience justifies. 

Now, interactionists are more empirical than parallelists. 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAU 239 

They try to keep to the differences between the action of mind 
and the action of the physical as these have ordinarily been 
conceived. The interactionist accepts the mechanical view 
of nature and shows that nature must, therefore, be supple- 
mented by mind in order to account for human conduct. 
If we grant the premises, the conclusion appears to follow 
inevitably. We shall not lay stress on the hackneyed argu- 
ments against interactionism based on the principle of the 
conservation of energy. Were this principle all that stood 
in the way, it could not be adjudged a sufficient obstacle. 
The real obstacle which interactionism must meet is the 
justification of a soul. We know nothing of a mind or soul 
substance coordinate with the physical world. Experience 
indicates consciousness, the mind, and the physical. The 
question is: How are these related? Until it is proved that 
they cannot be united without a dualism, theories, like parallel- 
ism and interactionism, are out of order. 

We pass next to what we have called the empirical meaning 
of parallelism. I have always been inclined to call this a 
temporal parallelism while the metaphysical parallelism has 
seemed to me to be founded on spatial concepts. Now, the 
facts appear to indicate that, to a series of pulses of con- 
sciousness, A B C, a series of brain-states, X Y Z, correspond. 
In this sense, they are mathematical functions of each other. 
We have every reason to believe that each brain-state is 
unique and that each pulse of consciousness is likewise unique 
and irrecoverable. This belief is founded on the facts which 
point to the relative localization of sensory areas and on the 
part played by the association tracts. Such an empirical 
parallelism, which is essentially temporal and bespeaks a 
correspondence of brain-states (and not of material elements 
and their relations) to the temporally coincident phases of 
the individual's consciousness, is a scientific hypothesis which 
has so far been supported by investigation. It is free from 
the absurdities of the older metaphysical forms of parallelism. 
It does not assume that consciousness is a substance or that 
it is an evanescent copy of the physical world. The psychol- 
ogist does seek to show, however, that to such a mental 
activity as association, which lies back of such temporal 



240 CRITICAL REALISM 

processes as memory, recognition, and reasoning, there cor- 
responds the spreading of excitement along the association 
fibres of the brain. There is thus a correspondence oj method 
in the two domains. 

The clearest denial of this empirical form of parallelism is 
to be found, not in interactionism, because this is opposed 
to metaphysical parallelism, but in the position of M. Bergson 
who flatly denies that there is a unique series on both sides. 
**If we take a given brain-state," he says, *'I believe that 
many psychological [psychical] states are able to graft them- 
selves on it/* {Bulletin de la Societe Francaise de Philosophic, 
May 2, 1 90 1.) This view claims to be founded on observation, 
although it is impossible for me to conceive how observation 
can perform the task assigned. Let us glance at the method 
he adopted. He passed to the most complicated part of 
nature, the brain, and concentrated his attention on the part 
of the brain which conditions a certain function of speech. 
On the mental side, he abstracted from the higher and more 
complex mental processes and sought to analyze the memory 
of words, especially the memory of the sounds of words. *'I 
was,'* he asserts, *'this time on the frontier; I was almost 
touching the cerebral event in which the auditory vibration 
continues itself. . And yet there was a separation. I saw, 
at the precise moment when the psychical fact is going to double 
itself with a cerebral concomitant, why and how the thought 
has need to develop in movement in space all that which it 
encloses of possible action, all that which it has of motor 
quality.*' {Ihid, pp. 48-49.) Introspection and theory are 
strangely mingled in this description, so that theory almost 
masquerades as fact. What have we here more than the 
statement that every psychical fact has motor consequences, 
that images and ideas are qualified with kinaesthetic meanings, 
and that the purely sensory is an abstraction? How, indeed, 
from the very nature of the case could M. Bergson know 
that the psychical fact is at first alone and only later takes to 
itself a cerebral state to express its motor nature? The basis 
of this position is determined by a theory of matter and a 
theory of perception. The brain for M. Bergson is a system 
of possible reactions on things, and consists entirely of paths 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 241 

along which a stimulus may travel. The result is that the 
sensory correspondence of the brain is eliminated from the 
start. It is no wonder, then, that many thoughts may 
connect themselves with one cerebral event. If we grant his 
interpretation of the brain and of perception, all that is needed 
further is the acknowledgment that many trains of thought 
may express themselves in the same overt action. But this fact 
is accepted by parallelism of the empirical type also. The parts 
of M. Bergson's hypothesis do not stand alone; we have to do 
with a system which is in nearly every detail different from 
that which we have felt ourselves forced to construct. What 
M. Bergson has brought out excellently is the fact that there 
are different levels in consciousness and that the higher, more 
abstract, levels are built upon the levels of sensation, perception, 
and imagery. But introspection cannot decide that only the 
lower levels have a cerebral concomitant. The ideo-motor 
view, which has become almost a fact in psychology, asserts 
that the bare idea of a movement's sensible effects is its suffi- 
cient mental cue; but trains of thought involve apperceptive 
systems corresponding to systems of association, and these 
only gradually settle down into a conclusion which has a 
motor basis. The aroused energy of the brain is at first 
kept in longitudinal tension, as it were, and only after an 
interval does a system form which is longitudinally stable. 
When this occurs, the energy sinks downward and passes into 
action. We shall therefore accept an empirical, temporal 
parallelism, i. e., the position that every pulse of conscious- 
ness has a physical correlate. We see no reason, however, 
to hold that the reverse is the case. 

Yet another problem confronts the absorption of conscious- 
ness by the physical. Suppose it to be admitted that the facts 
require a more flexible view of physical activity through the 
levels of nature which are correlated by the theory of evolu- 
tion than mechanism can supply, there still remains the task 
of harmonizing extension and consciousness. Can that which 
is extended be conscious? That which is extended must, 
in that case, be conscious throughout its extension. Does not 
this involve, however, that extensiveness is a character of 
consciousness? If, for example, the whole cortex functions 



242 CRITICAL REALISM 

during any pulse of consciousness, must not that surge of 
consciousness be in some sense itself extensive? Before an 
attempt can be made to answer this question, a clear idea 
must be attained of the exact meaning of extension when 
applied to consciousness and to the physical respectively. 

Consciousness is a manifold as well as a unity ; its parts are 
notionally separable even if not so existentially or, as logicians 
usually speak of it, physically. It has depth, or an organiza- 
tion of levels, and extensiveness, or the breadth of the field 
of objects and ideas experienced together. For both these 
aspects, psychology has pointed out a cerebral parallel. 
Its continuity at any one time is that of a functional system 
dominated by a purpose or a conflict of purposes instead of 
that of a seamless garment passively continuous, that is, 
untorn. It is an intensive manifold whose unity is conative 
and based on a synthesis of a peculiar kind in which the 
elements have no prior existence. The psychologist is con- 
vinced that consciousness is partially expressive of habits, 
tendencies, associations, apperceptive systems, past syntheses, 
and that these control much that appears in experience from 
time to time. He is, however, also convinced that these 
relative unities are undergoing change according to the 
situations in which the individual finds himself, and that 
consciousness plays a decisive part in this process of maintain- 
ing and reconstituting the individual. Thus consciousness is 
a synthesis whose parts have no preexistence although they 
have a source. We must reject all theories tending towards 
mental chemistry, for these shade into, and are sympathetic 
with, mind-stuff hypotheses and their ilk — views which, as 
we have seen, are founded on the misapplication to conscious- 
ness of the category of substance. Consciousness is not 
.directly conserved. Hence, we may conclude that the con- 
\/tinuity of consciousness is not additive but functional. The 
unity is born with that which is unified. Let us look at the 
brain to see if we can discover anything analogous in its 
working. 

If we are to follow modern theories in regard to the local- 
ization of cerebral functions, certain kinds of experiences 
are quite definitely related to particular parts of the brain. 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 243 

Parts of the brain seem to possess specific energies, that is, 
capacities. The question as to the innateness or the acquired 
character of these capacities is irrelevant to the present 
problem. The important point to consider is this : Do cerebral 
centres have a unity ? We have already broached this problem 
from the side of causality. We are interested now more from 
the side of space, although the two aspects are not finally 
separable. Does space, as some hold, necessarily involve 
complete externality of parts in the sense that wholes are mere 
additions of self-sufficient units? There seems to be a con- 
fusion in the minds of those thinkers who hold such a view 
between mathematical and real, or physical, space, that is, 
reality as extended. Positions in mathematical space are 
external to one another because they possess no other property 
by reference to which they can be distinguished. It is in 
. this sense that mathematical space is homogeneous. Internal 
relations in a homogeneous, non-qualitative continuum would 
, be meaningless, since they would have no basis. Externality 
, follows, then, as a deduction from the nature of the system. 
( Physical extension, on the other hand, is not distinct from 
the things and processes which are spatial, and, hence, can- 
not dictate characteristics to things. It follows, then, that 
a priori reasoning from the nature of mathematical space 
cannot determine the non-existence of internal relations and of 
dynamic, synthetic unities in the physical world. 

Since we are concerned at present more with the general 
, outlines of the mind-body problem than with a justification 
1 of the details, we shall assume the correctness of the criticism 
we have passed upon the universalization of mechanical 
, principles and shall hold to the position that the brain develops 
\ systems which are functional unities. What more we shall, 
I perhaps, say upon this question will be in the way of suggestion. 
] In what sense can we speak of consciousness as extensive? 
; It has for so long been the custom to consider consciousness 
I as unextended, that this question may at first strike the 
' reader as absurd. Surely consciousness cannot be measured 
I with a foot-rule or divided into parts which exclude one 
I another. How could such a division be made, since con- 
^ tinuity is one of the chief characteristics of consciousness? 



244 CRITICAL REALISM 

It would be as ludicrous to attempt to separate a feeling from 
a perception as to endeavor to perform an operation upon a 
ghost. These are not physical things, and we should not 
apply to them the categories and concepts which we apply to 
physical things. In an earlier part of the chapter, we saw that 
consciousness was not a thing which sought position alongside 
of other things. It is a variant, and not a substance. You can- 
not superpose a standard unit of measurement upon a variant, 
nor can you deal with it after the fashion of the external sci- 
ences. The parts are more than organic to one another and 
are temporal; hence, they are not divisible. Thus all our asso- 
ciations with the extension of physical things are at fault if 
carried over to consciousness. Consciousness is not extended 
after the manner of a physical thing, for the very simple reason 
that it is not a physical thing. Let all this be granted; yet 
in a very real sense consciousness is extended. As a variant 
of the brain, it is in the brain, not as an ivory sphere is encap- 
sulated in another in those curious products of Chinese patience 
which we see in museums, but in a unique way which it 
requires reflection to make clear. This uniqueness follows 
from the genuine uniqueness of consciousness or, what is 
the same thing, the essential difference between consciousness 
and the physical as this is known by the physical sciences. 
Now, the relation indicated by the preposition ''in'' is thought 
of in terms of the presence of one measurable physical thing 
in another which is larger. Thus the smaller object is a part 
of the larger or occupies a part of the space included by the 
larger. A cell, for instance, is a visible part of organic tissue. 
Undoubtedly, this is the meaning which we give to the word 
' 'in'' ; and its basis in perception and in the concepts of physical 
things which we are forced to construct is evident. I wish to 
point out that this meaning and its associations should not be 
transferred to the quite different sphere of the relation of 
consciousness to the physical. Consciousness is exist entially 
present to that part of the cortex which is functioning, and 
the brain's space is its space. It is where it arises and where 
it acts. When we call it a variant of the brain, we imply 
that it is inseparable from the brain and penetrates it with 
right as a part of the reality of the brain. Consciousness is 



75 CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 245 

the brain become conscious; it is a highly evolved part of 
reality flowering out into that unique and non-substantial 
variant which forms our experiencing. Evidently, it is not 
in the physical as one physical thing is in another, and to 
conceive it properly we must revise our unduly limited 
notion of what ''being in a thing" may mean. Let us see 
whether we can create a clear and definite idea of what this 
new type of ''inness" is. 

The best experiential basis for a comprehension of the inness 
of consciousness is the feeling which we all have of the penetra- 
tion of our body by the vital feelings and by pleasure and pain. 
Our body fairly tingles at times with emotion. This is why 
the ancients assigned consciousness to the heart or the liver. 
Such empirical localizations had their foundation in a felt 
presence of part of our experiencing in the body. It is 
from this datum that animism took its rise. Primitive man 
simply took it for granted that other things, like trees and 
stones, were penetrated by a vital self as his body was. 
Animism of this form is not dualistic; there are not two 
separable things, the body and the vital self. The body is 
animated, that is, the body is experienced as animated. It is 
only later that reflection makes a soul in the true sense of the 
term; the soul is a hypothesis to account for certain mis- 
understood facts, such as those of dream-life and of trance. 
It is this reflective animism alone that is dualistic. And, 
strange to say, its clumsy dualism lingers yet in psychological 
and philosophical circles. Make an entity out of consciousness 
or its source, the soul, and the tantalizing, because unsolv- 
able, mind-body dualism appears. What I have been endeav- 
oring to prove is that this is a pseudo-problem, that the brain 
contains consciousness. To take consciousness from the brain 
is to degrade it, to rob it of part of its reality. It is, then, this 
experiential animism which furnishes us the most satisfactory 
foundation for the proper conception of the presence of con- 
sciousness in the brain. Yet we must not rest in the experience 
itself, but must, instead, use it as an aid and an aid only. We 
do not feel consciousness in the brain where reason tells us 
that it is. Thus its whereabouts is not given as a matter of 
intuition. But why should it be so given ? When we come to 

17 



fc 



246 CRITICAL REALISM 

think of it, such an intuition would be impossible. It would 
involve a distinction of consciousness from the brain, that is, 
knowledge of itself and of the brain and of the relation between 
the two. But consciousness cannot know the brain unless it 
be represented as an object in consciousness, that is, unless 
it stimulates the brain and thus controls the rise in con- 
sciousness of a percept. But the brain cannot stimulate itself 
through the sensory nerves. It follows that consciousness 
knows where it is only indirectly. We may say, then, that 
the presence of consciousness in the brain is not the relation 
of one thing to another, but the immanence of that part of 
reality which is our changing field of experience to the rest of 
the same existential part of the physical world. Unfor- 
tunately, there is no adequate word to express what we think. 
To call consciousness an aspect of reality is to court the 
danger of falling into the quagmires of the double-aspect theory. 
It is not an aspect of reality; it is reality, although not the 
whole of reality. In consciousness we are reality, although not 
the whole of it. Hence, to speak of it as an aspect is wrong, if 
the association of appearance to an external knower — the 
traditional association — is maintained. Nor is consciousness 
the inner side of reality while that which we learn through the 
physical sciences is the outer side. The distinction between 
an inner and an outer does not hold for reality. The transfer- 
ence of such spatial contrasts to reahty should be discouraged. 
Because a certain class of information about reality is gleaned 
by means of the material controlled by the external organs of 
sense, that is, the organs concerned with stimuli coming from 
outside the body, it does not follow that the knowledge thus 
obtained deals with an outer aspect of reality. Were this so, 
we should be forced to judge that the proprio-ceptors, that is, 
the organs concerned with stimuli arising within the body, 
give us knowledge of the inner aspect of reality, which is 
evidently nonsense. Consciousness is not in the cortex as one 
thing is in another, nor is it the inner aspect of the brain. 
Consciousness, we have said, is a part of reality, although not 
a measurable part. With this ''givenness" of a part of the total 
nature of reality must be contrasted the knowledge about reality 
gained through the physical sciences. This knowledge is as 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 247 

complete as we can obtain in this fashion. But it remains 
knowledge; it is not reality. When we come to examine the 
knowledge thus obtained, we find that it deals with reality as 
a measurable substance whose parts have a certain structure, 
and function in certain ways. Now, we have every reason to 
regard the knowledge which we gain in physics, chemistry, 
and biology as valid; yet it is not knowledge of consciousness. 
It is evident, then, that consciousness does not exhaust the 
whole nature of the brain. When the cortex functions, 
consciousness forms part of the nature of the brain, of what is 
existentially there. It is simply a part of the whole nature 
of the brain which cannot stimulate the sense-organs and, 
hence, cannot be known by the physical sciences. We can 
now see more clearly what is the matter with panpsychism. 
It makes consciousness the whole reality of the brain, and is 
forced to regard the knowledge acquired by the physical 
sciences as not knowledge of reality. Our position is that 
this knowledge is of reality and that it does not conflict with 
the inclusion of consciousness in the physical world. 

We can now return to the question which has dominated 
the discussion for the last few pages : In what sense can we 
speak of consciousness as extended? We have tried to prove 
that consciousness is in the brain in the sense that it is part 
of the nature of the brain when it is functioning; it is what we 
have called a functional variant of the cortex. As such, there 
is no valid reason to deny that consciousness is an extended 
manifold. It arises in and is efl:ective in the physical world. 
Its unity is that of the integrative activity of the brain which 
it helps to direct. Hence, it is as extended as the brain is. 
Let us try to interpret this logical conclusion of our analysis 
of the mind-body problem. 

The reason why thinkers have asserted that consciousness 
is unextended is that it cannot be treated like a physical 
thing. To speak of the size of a sensation in terms of milli- 
meters is absurd. One cannot superpose units of measurement 
on images as one can on things. It is true that images have 
apparent size; but, since images cannot crowd out things, this 
space is looked upon as imaginary. By contrast, real space 
is the space occupied by physical things and, as we have 



248 CRITICAL REALISM 

said, images are not things in this space. The reason is, of 
course, that they are not physical things. But we have seen 
cause to assert that this space which things are conceived 
by science to occupy is a conceptual creation of the mind. 
Instead, physical realities are extended. Real space is, there- 
fore, not space as this is conceived by mathematics, it is 
the physical thing known by us to be extended. Hence,- if 
consciousness is in the cortex as a variant, it must be extensive ; 
yet it does not follow that mathematics is applicable to it as 
it is to the physical thing as a whole. Mathematics is, strictly 
speaking, applicable only to that which is measurable; and 
consciousness is not measurable — for two reasons. In the 
first place, a physical standard cannot be applied to it; in the 
second place, it cannot cause perceptions referable to itself. 
Hence, the extent of the cortex in which consciousness is at 
any one time can be known only indirectly. We must bear in 
mind what we proved above, that consciousness has no intui- 
tion of its whereabouts. 

There is another point to which attention should, per- 
haps, be drawn. An image or a percept has extension as 
an attribute, that is, it is experienced as extensive. For 
instance, my image of the Louvre certainly looks larger than 
my head. How, then, can it be inside my head, as it must 
be if consciousness is a variant of the cortex? Very easily, 
since the size of presentations in the field of the individual's 
experience has nothing to do with real space. Images must not 
be thought of as stretched out in the brain or, if they are too 
large, curled up in it. The same holds of thing-experiences. 
A house-experience which I have when I look out of the 
window is many times larger than my other thing-experience 
which I call my head. True, but what of it? I certainly 
am not inviting the reader to believe that one-thing experi- 
ence is in another. Is the space of objects in experience 
therefore unreal? Assuredly not; it is simply a mistake to 
take it for what it is not. An image does not give us an 
intuition of the part of reality with which it is existentially 
connected. The thing-experience which we call the brain is 
in the reality we call the brain, whose size, relative to the meter- 
stick, we know. We know nothing of absolute sizes of parts 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 249 

of reality; yet we do know the absolute size of our images, 
while we also know their relative sizes in relation to one 
another. In short, a pulse of consciousness has an intuition 
neither of its whereabouts in reality nor its extent in reality. 
We cannot tell by introspection how many cells and association 
fibres must function to produce an image. Cerebral localiza- 
tion can be known only indirectly. Were consciousness to 
contain an intuition of its own. extent, that would be tanta- 
mount to an intuition of the extent of reality of which it was 
a variant. But we have already seen that consciousness is 
self-contained, and that extent is not an attribute experienced 
as holding of the total field of the individual's experiencing. 
Hence, we may conclude that consciousness is extensive but 
that we should not try to form an image of its extension. 
Consciousness is not a stuff whose parts are side by side and 
exclude one another, but a unity of a high order. Dominated 
as we are by concepts and images resting on our thing-expe- 
riences, it is extremely difficult to restrain ourselves from 
attempting to picture consciousness as an object with an 
extended surface. A little reflection, however, shows us what 
nonsense such an outlook is. Consciousness is the total 
changing field of the individuars experience and is as it is 
experienced. Its manifoldness and continuity are the aspects 
which most nearly reflect the complexity and functional unity 
of the cortical system in which it is. 

The problem of the efficacy of consciousness involves a 
detailed analysis of the probable nature of causal systems in 
reality. While we have hinted at the solution, a justification 
of it would be impossible apart from a thorough examination 
of the categories. Two points alone can be touched upon. 
First, if consciousness is absorbed by the physical world as this 
must be conceived by metaphysics, the efficacy of conscious- 
ness would not conflict with the principle of the conservation 
of energy. This assertion does not mean that consciousness is 
a form of energy, for energy is a measurable quantity in its 
primary meaning and consciousness is the part of reality 
which we live — not simply know about. In the second place, 
if consciousness is to be effective in the cortex, ^ the cortex 
must be more than a mechanical system ; it must be capable of 



2SO CRITICAL REALISM 

forming and maintaining functional unities which are veritably 
wholes irreducible to a mere sum of elements. If this be the 
case, the efficacy of consciousness cannot be set aside as 
unthinkable, because it is impossible to imagine how a feeling 
of pleasure can produce motion or an idea loosen the attractive 
force between two molecules. Instead, how best to think the 
processes which occur in such systems becomes a problem for 
both philosophy and science to face. In our theory of causality 
we must take organization more seriously into account. 

Our main purpose has been to prove that consciousness is 
not alien to the physical. In a general way, this conclusion 
has been justified. While the physicist does not meet with 
consciousness either in his facts or in his theories, that circum- 
stance is due to his subject-matter. He attains true knowledge 
of reality, but this knowledge does not conflict with the presence 
of consciousness in nature. We have seriously considered the 
reasons customarily given for the exclusion of consciousness 
and found them based either on dogmas or on mistakes in 
logic. Materialism and panpsychism are both extremes which 
are based on a denial of the validity of part of our actual 
knowledge ; and this denial is due in part to the narrowness of 
specialism and in part to a false theory of knowledge. 

At various times we have hinted that mind cannot be 
simply identical with consciousness. Consciousness is a flux 
which comes and goes. It is, moreover, by no means com- 
pletely self-sufficient. A stimulus which enters consciousness 
is able to do so only after it has been interpreted by mind in 
the light of past experience. Thus there are conditions which 
partly determine what shall be perceived. A recent psy- 
chologist has emphasized the part played by types as rela- 
tively flexible mental forms which interpret an incoming 
stimulus. (Pillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning.) In a 
similar manner, other psychologists stress the importance of 
the purpose which dominates the mind. This purpose may 
be only vaguely present in consciousness, yet it is functionally 
active. We may say, in fact, that consciousness contains 
only a minor part of the factors which account for the 
consciousness of the next moment. In the discussion of the 
self in Chapter IV, we pointed out the evident complexity of 



IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 251 

the individuars character: his habits, slowly acquired upon 
the basis of heredity; his ideals; his knowledge, which is 
largely potential at any one time; and his natural aptitudes 
along various lines, trained as a result of the experiencing 
process which works back into the conditions that partly 
control it. Again, we must not forget that the structure of 
the field of the individuars experience is due to an organiza- 
tion which rests on the past. Consciousness, as we experience 
it, rests on mental capacities which are apparently the result 
of evolution. 

It appears, then, that consciousness arises within a system 
which must be studied ontogenetically and phylogenetically. 
This system is what we call mind. In it we have epigenesis 
and preformation harmonized in a true development. Expe- 
riencing leaves its trace in mind and is thus indirectly con- 
served. We all feel that our minds broaden and gain a 
wider reach. We achieve more adequate apperceptive sys- 
tems, and these play into our conscious life in the most intricate 
fashion. 

Although we would not identify mind and consciousness, 
we would not separate them. Mind somehow flowers into 
consciousness, and consciousness seems to function as the 
means to the growth of mind. Mind is conserving and 
enduring, while consciousness represents the moment of 
adaptation and change. We may say, then, that conscious- 
ness is fundamentally conditioned by mind as well as by the 
stimulus which comes to the organism from the environment. 
So far as reality is concerned, its newness is a relative new- 
ness which always has a ground. Because this ground carries 
along with it the past, memory and growth in general are 
possible; it is in this sense that the self is relatively the same 
through time. We must remember, however, that this would 
not help us much did we not feel ourselves to be the same in 
consciousness. As Locke saw, the sameness of a soul would 
not make immortality worth while. 

Let us glance for a moment at the problem of memory. 
There are, so far as I can see, only two theoretical possibilities. 
Either experiences exist in a sort of mental cold-storage and 
memory is a literal participation in the past experience as it 



2S2 CRITICAL REALISM 

again enters consciousness; or, memory is a new experience 
qualified by the present, for empirical reasons, as giving us 
knowledge of the past. The first possibility seems to me to 
sin against the essential characteristic of consciousness, its 
temporary nature. (One of my friends has designated this its 
volatility.) Consciousness does not possess a duree reelle, 
beyond the specious present, but seems to be more like a song 
which dies away only to be renewed. If, on the other hand, 
a memory be a new experience based on memory as a func- 
tion of a conserving organ, this conserving organ must be the 
mind. That the mind should be capable of producing, under 
certain conditions, an experience similar to that which it pro- 
duced once before, seems to me quite within the bounds of 
naturalness. 

But what is the relation of the mind to the brain? Much 
of our present argument has concerned itself with the relation 
of consciousness to the brain as a physical reality. We tried 
to show that consciousness is not alien to the physical when this 
is rightly conceived. But this result would have no point if 
we could not establish some sort of identity between the 
mind and the brain. This identity cannot, however, be that 
of two substances, since the mind seems to be a developed 
system of capacities or functions based on evolution and 
educed and given concrete filling-out by that process which 
we call ''learning by experience." Instead of appealing to 
psychical dispositions, we are led to suppose that the brain 
achieves intricate organizations, which grow richer and more 
fiexible as time goes on. The psychologist calls these ''apper- 
ceptive systems" and holds that they are the ground of mean- 
ings and concepts. The mind would thus seem to be the 
tremendously complex system of sub-systems gradually built 
up during the lifetime of the individual upon the foundation, 
and with the assistance, of congenital capacities. It is 
evident that we look upon the brain as the organ of the mind. 
When neurology frees itself from bondage to the current 
mechanical views, I feel sure that it will come to understand 
the part played by organization in the organic world and will 
no longer seek to over-simplify. Just as physics is beginning 
to shake itself loose from the childish idea of matter so long 






IS CONSCIOUSNESS ALIEN TO THE PHYSICAL? 253 



dominant," so biology and neurology will soon come to admit 
that the brain surpasses the neat system of distinct, neural 
drainage-paths which has been assigned it. The mind's unity 
is the unity of the brain as an organ. It is the unity of the 
mind which gives unity to the stream of consciousness; and 
the unity of the mind is the unity of the brain as a function- 
ing system. 

Such a view could be regarded as the modern interpretation 
of the idea of the soul to be found in Aristotle when he is at his 
best. The mind is a part of the soul, and the soul of the 
individual is indissolubly one with the organism. '*The 
soul is the completed realization of the body.'' For us, of 
course, nothing is finished, but everything is in process. I 
presume that I need not warn the reader against taking this 
comparison with Aristotle's position too literally. His notion 
of ''form" is no longer tenable. 

This solution of the mind-body problem opens up meta- 
physical vistas which I would gladly explore. But I must 
postpone this exploration until another time. We are engaged 
at present in giving a firm foundation to epistemology, and it 
was in pursuance of this task that we found ourselves obliged 
to justify the implications of the Advance of the Personal. 
The conclusion at which we have arrived enables us to meet 
the problems which confronted empirical mental pluralism: 
Minds are distinct, while reality as a whole is continuous. 



CHAPTER X 
TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 

MANY thinkers have discussed the nature of truth without 
a prior examination of the meaning of knowledge ; and 
this procedure has led to controversies more or less barren of 
results. We must ask ourselves whether the question of truth 
does not so revolve around that of knowledge that it is impos- 
sible to tell what truth means and is unless it be first known 
what knowledge is. This closeness of connection between the 
two terms is indicated by the fact that the expression ''true 
knowledge'' is felt to be a tautology. It is like speaking of a 
round circle. Why is this? 

This problem ot the connection of truth and knowledge 
can be approached m two ways, the analytic and the genetic, 
and these should lead to the same general conclusion. When 
I assert that it is nonsense to speak of a round circle, I do so 
because the adjective might suggest that there are circles which 
are not round. I know that the definition of a circle includes 
roundness. Is the case the same with true knowledge? Yes 
and no. It certainly does seem to outrage our sense of pro- 
priety to speak of true knowledge as though knowledge could 
be other than true and still be knowledge. Truth would seem 
to be the criterion of knowledge so that no information could 
be knowledge unless it were true, Trueness would be a stamp, 
or seal, placed by judgment upon ideas, theories, propositions, 
data, etc., without which they would be held in doubt or 
considered not to be knowledge at all. In the same way, we 
might consider roundness a sign of a circle so that no figure 
that did not possess this characteristic would be adjudged a 
circle. Trueness and knowledge, roundness and a circle would 
thus be inseparables. We would be able to state that what- 
ever is a case of knowledge is true, and whatever is true is a 
case of knowledge. And this relationship we shall find to be 
very suggestive. But, in a very real sense, we can say that 
knowledge is not always true. Were knowledge always true, 

254 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 255 

it would be unlikely that we should have the term '"true," for 
this is a contrast-word implying its antithesis, ''false.'' It is 
evident that much that makes claim to be knowledge is denied 
its claim. It is finally considered false knowledge, and false 
knowledge is looked upon as no knowledge at all. Hence, the 
opposite of false knowledge is not true knowledge, but simply 
knowledge; and this is the reason why "true knowledge" 
strikes us as tautology. Does not this situation imply that 
trueness and falsity are reflective meanings assigned by judg- 
ment to what has claimed to be a case of knowledge? Ideas, 
theories, beliefs, and propositions claim to be knowledge and 
to give knowledge. But experience has made us aware that 
individual instances of these classes have failed to justify 
themselves. The result is that we are more wary and our 
reception of ideas which present themselves as knowledge is 
more inquisitorial and tentative. Ideas may be true and, 
again, they may be false. We may conclude from this analy- 
sis that the claim to knowledge and, accordingly, the meaning 
of knowledge logically precedes that of truth and its opposite, 
falsity. 

The genetic approach will likewise confirm us in the opinion 
that truth is a reflective meaning. It has often been pointed 
out that a child believes everything it is told. So long as 
there is no contradiction, or so long as the child does not 
realize that there is a contradiction, it accepts statements as 
knowledge. Man's primary attitude is belief, not doubt. 
The predominance of an idea carries belief with it, and at 
first predominance is the rule. Only after frequent disappoint- 
ment is a more hesitant attitude toward idea developed. 
Philosophers and psychologists of diverse schools have agreed 
upon this fact ; and since it is one of the few things upon which 
they have agreed, let us note it jo5rfully and pass on. The 
term ''belief" has a more personal flavor than has "knowl- 
edge. Reflection has already entered in to cast doubt upon the 
necessary validity of what we believe. Leaving aside for the 
time being the contrast-meanings which have grown up around 
the word, I think we have a right to say that belief involves 
the experience of knowing. Knowing as an attitude of 
acceptance is more primitive than that which we now call 



2 56 ' CRITICAL REALISM 

belief. It follows, then, that knowledge as a meaning and 
experience precedes doubt and the hesitation and uncertainty 
which accompany it. But it is only after disbelief has 
succeeded belief that what was looked upon as knowledge is 
qualified as not-knowledge. When this exigency arises, the 
distinction between true and false beliefs is developed. Belief 
differentiates out from the knowledge-attitude and takes to 
itself the contrast with doubt and disbelief. What is believed 
rightly is a true belief, and a true belief gives us knowledge. 
Thus the previous analysis applies. It follows that the 
analytic and the genetic ways of approach confirm each other 
and assure us that knowledge as an experience precedes truth 
as an experience. Hence, we must examine the knowledge- 
experience as closely as we can in order to prepare the way 
for an understanding of what is meant by truth. 

Vague as the term * 'knowledge" is, it is apparent that it 
implies an apprehension of some sort and that truth and its 
opposite refer to what is apprehended and thus presuppose the 
apprehension. Before we can go a step further, we must come 
to a decision in regard to the meanings of the word *' knowl- 
edge.'' The critical investigations we have already made in 
the preceding chapters should stand us in good stead.^ 

The nature of knowledge can be understood only after an 
adequate standpoint has been reached ; that is why we have been 
forced to postpone discussion of it until now. He is mistaken 
who thinks he can understand the various meanings of knowl- 
edge by a hasty inspection of the cognitive attitude alone. 
We have already realized that this supposition was the primary 
mistake made by the new school of realists. The position 
adopted in common by Stout (Aristotelian Society, Pro- 
ceedings, 1910-11, p. 188) and Russell (ibid., p. 119), that 
ideas do not intervene between reality and the subject knowing, 
is due to this hasty inspection-view of knowledge. The 
result is a confusion between the necessary distinctions of 
logic, of common sense, and of epistemology. To understand 
the nature of knowledge, we shall be obliged to see what it 

1 While not a pragmatist, I heartily agree with the protest voiced by James against the 
usual assumption that the meaning of knowledge is clear in the current philosophies. Were it 
clear, I feel certain that idealists would no longer feel that they are justified in denying the 
right of the mental to know the non-mental. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 257 

means for common sense and for logic and then to point out 
how this meaning contains in germ the significance which 
critical realism must assign to it. 

For common sense there are two kinds, or types, of knowl- 
edge; these are knowledge-of-acquaintance and knowledge- 
about. Both terms have a definite empirical meaning which 
it is not difficult to indicate. We say that we have knowledge- 
of-acquaintance when the object has been present in the field of 
our experience. For instance, I state that I have knowledge- 
of-acquaintance of a particular person. This assertion means 
that I have met him and thus know at first hand what sort 
of man he is. I know something definite about him and this 
knowledge is based on my own observation. Thus knowl- 
edge-of-acquaintance is knowledge acquired directly by the 
individual by means of the presence of the object. The 
knowledge gained in this way may be largely conceptual, but 
it is felt to involve immediate contact with what is known. 
It is, moreover, less general than knowledge-about usually is, 
although it contains conceptual elements. Knowledge-about, 
on the other hand, is indirect knowledge. Such knowledge is 
conceptual and has its source in inference or in communication. 
A detective may possess knowledge about the author of a crime 
founded on the traces left behind. He may be sure that the 
criminal is a strong man or a man of considerable ability. 
Again, he may be told by a witness that the criminal is so-and- 
so and is engaged in a certain business in the city. It is 
evident that knowledge-of-acquaintance is, primarily, knowl- 
edge due to acquaintance, and knowledge-about is knowledge 
due to inference and communication. While the English 
language possesses only the word ''know" to designate these 
two kinds of knowledge, many other languages employ two 
words. Thus knowledge-of-acquaintance in Latin is cognoscere, 
knowledge-about is scire. In French, there are the two corre- 
sponding words, connaitre and savoir; in German, kennen and 
wissen. This distinction was emphasized by Grote, and, 
since his time, has become one of the recognized contrasts in 
knowledge. The greater part of the knowledge of the world 
possessed by any individual is knowledge-about. We depend 
upon books and conversation and interpret the information 



2s8 CRITICAL REALISM 

thus acquired by means of our own experiences. Hence, we 
know about many things with which we are not acquainted. 

This contrast between the two kinds of knowledge of 
things which we possess has been employed by psychologists 
and epistemologists as a basis for what they regard as a 
necessary distinction. Unfortunately, this difference in use 
has led to confusion. Theories have crept in which have no 
place in the empirical meanings. The plain man who occupies 
the standpoint of Natural Realism does not for a moment 
doubt that the things which he has knowledge about exist in 
the same way that things of which he has knowledge-of- 
acquaintance exist. Always they are independent of his 
knowledge; the difference lies in the kind of knowledge he 
has through his direct or indirect relation to them. They are 
present or absent; and this presence or absence does not 
affect them, but does affect the knowledge of the individual. 
The plain man accepts the difference in the kind of knowledge 
which ensues, but does not seek to explain it except in the 
most general way. He feels that it has something to do with 
his sense-perception. This common-sense contrast is really 
complex and contains two distinctions : first, presence to, and 
absence from, the thing known; second, two levels of knowl- 
edge — casual, immediately given knowledge and knowledge 
gained by investigation. The meaning of knowledge is still 
dominated by Natural Realism and is thought of as a direct 
or indirect apprehension of the object known. 

The psychologist is interested in the knowledge an individ- 
ual possesses of certain classes of sense-data. He points out 
that certain experiences, such as sounds and colors, may be 
lacking in the consciousness of particular individuals and that 
this lack cannot be made good by any amount of knowledge 
about sounds and colors. Knowledge about the function per- 
formed by colors and about their physical causes remains 
distinct from the immediate experience of the sense-qualities. 
It is as though knowledge-of -acquaintance of certain things 
in the physical world could not be acquired by particular 
individuals. But it is discovered by the philosopher that, 
when an individual is limited in this way, his knowledge-of- 
acquaintance of physical things varies in a corresponding way 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 259 

from that of the normal man. This fact led thinkers like 
Hume to stress the primacy of sense-qualities in knowledge. 
This and other facts have caused us to refuse to regard the 
outlook of Natural Realism as adequate. But, while the 
psychologist's use of the empirical distinction helps to force 
home the problem of knowledge, it is a mistake to substitute 
it for the empirical meanings of common sense. 

The epistemologist may desire to analyze the exact nature 
of the two kinds of knowledge and, impressed by the sig- 
nificance of the application of the contrast made by the psy- 
chologist to his field of investigation, may seek to universalize 
the application. Knowledge-of-acquaintance for the psychol- 
ogist is founded on the real presence to the introspective 
subject of the sensations known. Knowledge-6>/-acquaintance 
is founded on knowledge hy acquaintance; that is, by the 
presence of that which is known. To know is to be conscious 
of that which is known. And that which is known is inde- 
pendent of the introspective attitude called ''being conscious 
of.'' Why not, thinks the epistemologist, apply this analysis 
of knowledge to all knowledge so far as this can be done ? But 
that is precisely what the plain man has already done. He 
asserts that he is aware of things in the physical world or that 
he perceives them, while he is conscious of his feelings. In 
both cases, the natural view of knowledge is the presence of 
the thing known. Investigation enforces this view for the 
psychical and interposes weighty objections for the physical. 
Much of our task has been an evaluation of these objections 
and our conclusion was, that they were well-founded. Knowl- 
edge of the physical world does not involve the presence of 
that which is known. The problem which confronts the 
epistemologist is: How can these two kinds of knowledge be 
explained? The danger which threatens to vitiate his con- 
clusions is the confusion of various standpoints. We shall 
try to bring this out by a criticism of the analysis of knowl- 
edge made by contemporary thinkers. 

Mr. Russell regards the distinction between knowledge-by- 
acquaintance and knowledge-by-description as of fundamental 
importance for epistemology. Let us examine his use of these 
expressions. ''I say that I am acquainted with an object," 



26o CRITICAL REALISM 

writes Mr. Russell, ''when I have a direct cognitive relation 
to that object, i.e., when I am directly aware of the object 
itself. This direct cognitive relation is simply the converse 
of the relation of object and subject which constitutes presenta- 
tion. That is, to say that 5 has acquaintance with O is essen- 
tially the same thing as to say that O is presented to 5." 
Now the plain man, as we have seen, believes that persons 
and physical things are presented to him. Not so Mr. Russell. 
He has worked out a theory of knowledge for which only cer- 
tain things can be presented to the individual. Chief among 
these are sense-data, the **I,'' and universals. Now these 
are looked upon as non-mental and independent of the act of 
apprehension. We, on the contrary, have been led to hold 
that the word '' mental*' has two different meanings and that 
the subject-self, universals, and percepts are mental in the 
sense that they must belong to a stream of consciousness or 
the field of an individual's experience. We pointed out that 
the meaning of ''aware oV is not epistemologically primitive, 
but arises out of the characteristics of the field of the individ- 
ual's experience. It is essentially a reflection of the outlook 
which we have labeled "Natural Realism" (c/. Chap. IV). 
The fault that I have to find with Mr. Russell, as with 
Mr. Stout, is that he takes this construction as revelatory of 
the nature of knowledge. He seems to think that an episte- 
mology can be founded on simple inspection. But this is not 
the case. The view of knowledge which inspection gives 
is a function of the standpoint; and the attainment of the 
proper standpoint is no easy matter, as we have found. The 
conclusion we reached was that all that is experienced as 
together with the self in one field of coexistence is mental and 
that this coexistential field has a developed structure which 
may be characterized as the subject-object duality. The object- 
side obtains such meanings as "commonness" and ** perma- 
nence" and "reappearance," and the subject-side is forced to 
develop the meaning "aware of," to account for the coexistence 
of subject and object. Nevertheless, that which is actually 
present together with the subject is mental. We shall seek 
to indicate how this analysis enables us to conquer epistemolog- 
ical difficulties which have seemed insuperable. In the first 



i. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 261 

place, it follows that the individual can be acquainted with the 
mental only, if acquaintance involves the actual presence of 
that which is known; yet that which is mental may he expe- 
rienced as Si physical thing. Let us apply this result to the 
distinctions advocated by Mr. Russell. 

What Mr. Russell would call a group of sense-data, I 
should call a thing-experience. Such a thing-experience is 
mental, although the plain man regards it as a physical {i.e., 
non-mental) thing. Thus the objects in the field of the 
individual's experience which are qualified as common, inde- 
pendent, non-mental, permanent are actually personal, mental, 
transient, and not separable from the total field. Natural 
Realism, we saw, broke down and the Advance of the Personal 
led to the extension of the meaning ''personal" to the whole 
field. The world is somehow my world. Now, Mr. Russell 
accepts the Advance of the Personal for the whole field so far 
as universals are not involved. But there is no justification 
for this exception. Universals are conceptual objects in the 
field of the individual's experience connected genetically and 
analytically with the rest of the field. We labored this 
point, however, long enough in the third chapter and can now 
afford to be dogmatic. It follows that all objects which are 
present in the field are mental, even though they may be 
experienced as physical or mathematical or ideal. Thus we 
have knowledge, by acquaintance, of whatever is in the field. 
Certain objects may be qualified as absent, but as objects 
to which we take the cognitive attitude they are present. 

Let us pass next to what Mr. Russell calls knowledge by 
description. This type of knowledge holds for the rest of 
reality that can be known so far as it cannot be known by 
acquaintance. By a description he means any phrase of the 
form ''a so-and-so" or ''the so-and-so." The first form gives 
us an ambiguous description, the second a definite description. 
Thus an object is know^n by description when we know that 
there is one object, and no more, having a certain property. 
(Aristotelian Society, Proceedings, p. 113.) In indefinite, or 
ambiguous, descriptions we seem to deal with a class; in 
definite descriptions, with a single individual or thing. When 
we come to consider the contrast between knowledge by 

18 



262 CRITICAL REALISM 

acquaintance and knowledge by description which Mr. Russell 
has in mind, we find a confusion between the empirical distinc- 
tion between knowledge-of -acquaintance and knowledge-about, 
and his own epistemological antithesis. Let us examine some 
of his statements. We shall find ourselves involved in a 
discussion of the nature of objective reference, or denotation. 

Knowledge by description consists of judgments of which 
the thing known is not a constituent. {Mind, Jan., 1913, 
p. 77.) Yet we often intend to make our statement, not in the 
form involving the description, but about the actual thing 
described. That is to say, when we say anything about 
Bismarck, '*we should like, if we could, to make the judgment 
which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgment of which 
he himself is a constituent." (Russell, The Problems of Phil- 
osophy , p. 88.) We certainly wish to make a true judgment 
about Bismarck, but I very much doubt that this is a judg- 
ment which Bismarck alone could make. There seems to be 
a confusion between Bismarck as a person of a certain character 
and political position and a self which he alone could intuit.^ 
The object-self is as much a conceptual construction for the 
individual as it is for others, and our friends may know us 
better than we know ourselves. Now, the plain man speaks of 
his knowledge of persons just as he speaks of his knowledge 
of physical things. He believes he can think of them when they 
are not present and make true statements about them. As 
we shall see, it is upon this foundation that the distinctions 
of logic have grown. It is for this reason that logic is essen- 
tially realistic. What Mr. Russell is really struggling for is 
a new basis for logic in accordance with his own epistemology. 
His criticisms of the usual view of denotation can be understood 
only when looked at from this point of view. 

In place of the proposition, ''Julius Caesar was assas- 
sinated," which seems to claim Julius Caesar himself as a 
constituent, Mr. Russell is led to substitute the proposition, 
*'The man whose name was Julius Caesar was assassinated." 
Julius Caesar is now merely a name, that is, a shape or sound, 

} It will be remembered that we distinguished between the enjoyment, or immediate exper- 
iencing, of the subject-self as a part of the total field of the individual's experience and the 
knowledge which the individual may gain through reflection of his capacities and character. 
Mr. Russell does not emphasize this difference, if he recognizes it. I may have knowledge of 
Bismarck in this latter sense as valid and direct as that which Bismarck himself possessed. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 263 

and all the rest of the terms stand for concepts. Thus the 
proposition is reduced to constituents with which we are 
acquainted. But, in order to accomplish this result, we must 
be sure that the phrase, ''the man whose name was Julius 
Caesar" is not a constituent with a unity of its own. So 
we must interpret this as meaning ''One and only one man 
was called Julius Caesar, and that one was assassinated." 
This process of finding equivalents so that the denotation of a 
judgment may disappear may strike the reader as absurd; it 
seems so like the attempt of the ostrich. And I must confess 
that it so impressed me at first. It is, however, the logical 
result of his view of denotation. I shall attempt to show that 
this theory of denotation leads logically to solipsism. 

Let us examine critically this theory of denotation. It will 
be best to give his own words and then point out the implica- 
tions. "The denotation, I believe, is not a constituent of the 
proposition, except in the case of proper names, i.e., of words 
which do not assign a property to an object, but merely and 
solely name it. And I should hold, further, that, in this sense, 
there are only two words which are strictly proper names of 
particulars, namely, 'I' and 'this.'" (Aristotelian Society, 
Proceedings, igio—ii, p. 121.) But, if this be the case, the in- 
dividual's knowledge is limited to acquaintance with partic- 
ulars, which are private; to concepts or universals, which, I 
have shown, are likewise personal; and to propositions involv- 
ing these particulars and, therefore, as personal as they or com- 
posed of concepts which also are personal. How, then, can 
the individual make a reference beyond his own experience or 
claim to know other persons and things? Is not his knowledge 
essentially that of the acquaintance type, and does not the term 
"description" become a misnomer? Knowledge by description 
consists of judgments of which the thing known is not a con- 
stituent. The problem is, to show how judgment gives knowl- 
edge about a thing if it cannot indicate what thing it means. 
There would seem to be a chasm between the judgment and 
the thing which makes them absolutely indifferent to each 
other. It would require an absolute mind to know that the 
judgment contained knowledge of the existent. Thus Russell 
seems to me to be dangerously near such a position as that 



264 CRITICAL REALISM 

advocated formerly by Royce in The Religious Aspect of 
Philosophy. So long as he will not become an absolute 
idealist, he should consider himself an epistemological solipsist. 

The more we analyze his theory of knowledge in its relation 
to his logic, the more convinced we are that his difficulty lies 
in a false view of denotation. He denies denotation to the 
propositions which are descriptive because he believes it would 
conflict with the fundamental principle in the analysis of 
propositions; viz., '' Every proposition which we can understand 
must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are 
acquainted." {The Problems of Philosophy , p. 91.) Now, in the 
Advance of the Personal we have accepted a similar principle 
of an even more radical trend. The problem of reference 
faces us as definitely as it does Mr. Russell. Perhaps his 
position will show a lack of flexibility in his theory of knowl- 
edge where ours does not. 

The words ''denotation" and *' connotation," ''extension" 
and "intension" have had various interpretations. There is, 
besides, the question of usage to lead to confusion. The best 
tradition has kept the terms "extension" and "intension" for 
class-terms. The extension of a class-term refers to the 
species included by the genus. Thus the term "mammal" has 
the extension given it in zoological classifications as covering 
all the higher vertebrates. This does not mean that there is 
in nature an entity called mammal and that this is somehow 
found in the species. It does mean, however, that many small 
groups have attributes in common which enable us to classify 
them together ^ as related genetically. The individual animals 
exist and possess certain attributes, some of which are shared 
with a small group, others with a larger group including this 
and other small groups. Our classifications as objects of knowl- 
edge also exist, and so do our concepts, which reflect these 
classifications. Hence, when we speak of the extension of a 
class-term, we think of the species which come under it in a 
classification. When we refer to the intension, we think of the 
defining attributes of the class. Another usage has extended 
the application of extension to the individuals. It is, however, 
better to speak of denotation when we are thinking of par- 
ticular existents. Proper names and singular names thus have 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 265 

denotation. They are signs of particular things which we 
mean when we use the signs. When I am thinking of Walter 
Scott, I have the name in mind because it is associated with 
all that I htoTv about this individual ; it has served as a nucleus 
for my information about the individual who was named 
Walter Scott. Hence, when I conceive the person and wish to 
tell others that I am doing so, I say that I am thinking about 
Walter Scott. In this sense, the name ''Walter Scott" has 
denotation. It has social currency as a sign of a particular 
person about whom we can aU think. That is, each of 
us can have a conceptual object in the field of his experi- 
ence, which is labeled "Walter Scott." Instead of saying 
that a name has denotation when it is used as the sign of 
a thing or to show that we mean a particular thing or are 
thinking of an individual object, certain writers prefer to say 
that the name has objectivity. As Wolf rightly points out, 
the main function of a name is this reference to something. 
This is the truth MiU had in view when he wTote that names are 
''the names of things themselves, and not merely of our ideas 
of things." (Wolf, Studies in Logic, p. 23.) Now the name de- 
notes, or is the sign of, something, and as such has objectivity; 
but this logical function of the name is founded on our ability 
to think of or conceive objects and to give names to them. 
Language aids our thinking, but its function is determined by 
our thinking. Hence, logic reflects the realistic structure and 
meanings which characterize our natural outlook on the world. 
It is a mistake to mingle logic and epistemolog>^ and seek to 
correct logical distinctions by means of epistemological 
doctrines. But this is precisely what Russell does. 

Let us examine the basis of empirical reference or the 
objectivity of names. When I perceive an object, the denota- 
tion is given by the presence of the object. I am more apt to 
say, "It's a good book" than "This is a good book." Com^- 
munication forces me to make my reference selective. Thus 
the physical thing which is present is the subject of my judg- 
ment, and the question of what physical thing I am judging 
about has no meaning for me. If, however, another person is 
present and I make the judgment verbally and socially, I must 
indicate by my eyes or by a gesture what object I am making 



266 CRITICAL REALISM 

the subject of my judgment. If that is not suiBficient, I add 
a description to make the reference more definite. I say 
that I mean — that is, am referring to or talking about or 
thinking of — that red book at the end of the table. My 
companion thus attends to the same book or, to put it more 
critically, in accordance with the Advance of the Personal, 
attends to a corresponding book-experience. When I go down 
stairs, I take it for granted that we can continue to mean the 
same book.^ Why ? Because I can think of what I regard as a 
permanent thing which was present to me. I can assert where 
it is and what it is like and test these assertions. I have done 
this so often that I do not doubt my ability. Because, again, 
my companion has understood me and has thought of the 
same book I was thinking of and this fact has been tested. 
Thus reference is developed by communication, and for 
physical things is based on spatial position and on descriptive 
qualities. I am thinking of a thing; yes, but what thing? 
Then I describe it until it is selected and stands out from all 
other things. Thus empirical reference consists of two 
features: (i) The ability to think of what is not present; and 
(2) the ability to distinguish this thing from other objects. 
And these two features develop hand in hand. Gradually the 
individual builds up a construct of the world in which things 
are placed in spatial and temporal relations to one another. 
Now, the difference between proper names and singular names 
concerns, not the ability to think of what is not present — for 
that is common, — but the means by which the attention of a 
companion is led to the thing of which you are thinking. A 
proper name is primarily a sign socially recognized. It is for 
this reason that it can be said to have denotation or objectivity. 
A singular name is a means of accomplishing this selective 
reference where an unambiguous sign has not been created. 
The absence of description in the modern proper name is made 
possible only by the conditions of its application; its back- 
ground is always one of social agreement and mutual under- 
standing; and, when this is removed, descriptive epithets 
must enter in to supplement it. I suppose every community 
has its big John Smiths and little John Smiths, its old 

IThis is what I have called indirect apprehension, or presence-in-absence. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 267 

Mr. Brown and young Mr. Brown. We have here the selective 
feature of reference. Are these singular or proper names ? To 
ask the question is to see both kinds in their logical context 
or universe of discourse. It is unfortunate that the influence of 
formal logic has led to blindness in regard to such distinctions. 
But have proper names meaning? Certainly. Their 
meaning is this : They are the socially accepted sign of a 
particular individual. Thus the meaning of a proper name 
is a function of its use, and denotation and meaning are 
inseparable. Besides this, which is its primary meaning, it 
usually acquires associations with information about the 
individual which it denotes. A singular name, on the other 
hand, acquires its denotation through its meaning; more 
accurately, the process of selection which we explained above 
is reflected in the words which are grouped together. The 
person who creates the singular name must be capable of 
thinking of the thing; his knowledge of it may be much or 
little, — that does not matter, — but he does not know a 
proper name which applies. How, then, can he direct the 
thought of others to this thing ? Only by taking a class-name 
that means or denotes a large number of things of the same 
type without meaning anyone of them as such and adding 
attributes which select from these until only one is meant. 
In this way, indefiniteness of denotation passes to definiteness, 
while the concept which the words reflect becomes more 
complex. Suppose we define definiteness of denotation to be 
reference to one thing, no matter how little is known about 
that one thing, and indefiniteness of denotation to be reference 
to a class of things; that is, to many things without a selection 
among them. Then, so long as the thought is carried by a 
group of words to one thing in contradistinction from other 
things, that group of words has a definite denotation and 
is a singular term. When so used as a unity, the singular term 
denotes an individual, and its meaning is the thing which it 
denotes or, as the conceptualist would have it, the concept of 
the thing which it denotes. The difference between it and the 
proper name is one of genesis. The proper name acquires its 
meaning arbitrarity; it is created for a purpose. The singular 
name as a unity acquires its denotation, and thus its meaning, 



268 CRITICAL REALISM 

because its parts already had their meanings and their appHca- 
tion to the world of things, qualities, and relations. To put 
it another way, the singular name is composed of the words 
it is composed of because these words already had their 
objectivity, and these objectivities were the ones possessed by 
the thing to denote which the singular name was constructed. 
Thus *'the author of the Waverly Novels'' is a singular term 
denoting the individual who wrote the Waverly Novels. Its 
meaning is the object of thought which it calls up in the mind 
of the individual who uses it or understands it. Ordinarily, 
the mind is carried to what is experienced as the individual. 
The words lead us to think of the individual who wrote the 
Waverly Novels; but we hesitate, we want to know who he 
was, i.e,, what his name was and where he lived. Until we 
do, our curiosity is not satisfied. We do not have enough 
knowledge about the individual to think of him adequately. 
A single property like authorship does not select the individ- 
ual to the degree that the plain man's realism demands. 
Thus reference for common sense is a very simple matter. 
The world is potentially spread out before our mind's eye, and 
a group of words actualizes some part of it. They are like a 
wand which points to a part and that part becomes clear, 
somewhat as a bit of landscape does when a fog breaks in 
front of it. Now it is only when logic is studied at this level 
of common sense that its distinctions become clear. The 
mistake of many logicians has been to mingle theory of 
knowledge with empiricism. 

The epistemological logician will reply that this realism is 
impossible. When we think of things, the things are not 
actually the objects of our thought ; the object of our thought 
is the concept of the thing. Very true ; but this concept of the 
object, as you call it, to escape Natural Realism, is experienced 
as the object while you are actually thinking of the object, 
i.e., not reflective on the nature of your thinking. Moreover, 
if you wish to revise the outlook which is reflected in logic 
you must maintain also that you cannot have acquaintance 
with things; you can have only percepts of things. How, 
then, do you get reference to things at all? 

Empirical denotation, as we saw, is founded on the outlook 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 269 

of common sense — that things are actually present to appre- 
hension. It is because of this structure that we are able to 
make reference to them, to think of them, to have ideas of 
them. Destroy this basis, and denotation seems to be left in 
the air, like a dream-ladder which does not touch the ground. 
The problem here is fundamental. Logicians like Bradley 
and Bosanquet, who have idealistic tendencies, allow their 
theory of knowledge to enter their logic and assure us that 
Reality is the ultimate subject of every judgment. But how 
this Reality is present to the judgment they do not tell us very 
clearly. They say that Reality appears to us in perception or 
that we have contact with it in feeling. Very good; but this 
does not explain the logical distinctions which our language 
reflects. When I assert that this typewriter needs oiling, I 
am judging about the typewriter and do not concern myself 
with a more ultimate reality. In other words, logic, as a 
science, should try to understand the distinctions reflected in 
judgment and in the field of experience in general, rather than 
create new ones on its own responsibility. 

Now, the point I wish to make in contrast to the idealists, 
Bradley and Bosanquet, and the realist, Mr. Russell, is that 
the denotation worked out by common sense can be used by 
critical realism. The one-to-one correspondence between 
thing-experience and physical thing makes this possible. 
The pencil which I handle is a physical thing corresponding 
to the thing-experience which it partially controls. These are 
identified by common sense, but reflection forces us to distin- 
guish them. In place of the physical thing we then say that 
we have a percept caused by the thing and a concept of the 
thing. This concept may be expressed in terms of several 
propositions which state our knowledge about the thing. It is 
evident that the mechanism of denotation, or reference, arises 
within experience and does not require the actual presence of 
the object denoted. Neither knowledge-about nor reference 
necessitates a mysterious cognitive connection of the mind 
with physical things. 

We are now in a position to compare our own theory 
with that advocated by Mr. Russell. Denotation is for 
Mr. Russell the real presence of the thing denoted. But only 
19 



2^o CRITICAL REALISM 

the ''I '' and the ''this'' can be so present. It is for this reason 
that he speaks of the judgment which Bismarck alone can make 
and sets this up as an ideal which our propositions attempt 
to describe. If he were right in this, how could we ever be 
sure that our propositions were correct in their descriptions? 
My own position is that denotation depends on the organiza- 
tion of the objective sphere of our field of experience. If there 
is no locus there for the reference of an idea, the idea of 
reference cannot develop. This means that ideas are secon- 
dary to thing-experiences. When we once realize that we 
actually handle physical things, the one-to-one correspondence 
between them and the thing-experiences which gives meaning 
to this critical development of reference becomes clear. 

There are three facts which should be kept distinct. The 
first is mere presence in the individual's field of experience. 
We have tried to prove that nothing which is not mental in 
the larger sense of that term can so be present. This fact is 
the truth of idealism. Now, that which is present and thus 
mental is not necessarily known. The second fact is the 
existence of the attitude called cognitive, in distinction from 
the attitude called practical, taken by the subject-self toward 
a part of the field called the object. This object is a construct 
within the field of the individual's experience. If the object 
has the marks which mean to us a physical thing, it is expe- 
rienced as common and independent and permanent. There 
are, however, many other kinds of objects toward which the 
self takes the cognitive attitude. Concepts or universals, 
ideas, propositions, mathematical objects, fairyland may in 
this way be contrasted with the subject-self. In the inclusive 
sense of the term, all such objects are mental. Let us call this 
knowledge, consisting of the presence of the object, intuitive 
knowledge. I have tried to prove that we cannot have intui- 
tive knowledge of physical things. Natural Realism takes 
this contrast within experience naturally enough as one 
between the individual knowing and an independent reality 
known when it deals with physical things, certain ideal objects 
and, perhaps, mathematical objects. There is vacillation when 
other objects are concerned, for common sense is sure only of 
the extreme cases. States of mind and concepts are, on the 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 271 

other hand, looked upon as not independent of the individ- 
ual knowing, although independent of the knowing. Science, 
we have shown in the chapter ''Natural Realism and Science,'' 
works within this outlook but lifts the thing-experience from 
the perceptual to the conceptual level and seeks to remove 
the personal perspective by means of measurement. It thus 
obtains what it regards as objective data and interprets this 
by hypotheses, organizing concepts, and theories. But there 
is another fact in regard to knowledge which is equally impor- 
tant. I say that I know a thing when I take a cognitive 
attitude toward it as an object ; but I say that I have knowl- 
edge of an object when I have what I consider a true idea of 
the object. Now, the possibilities of these two kinds of 
knowledge are different. The first kind is limited to what is 
supposedly actually present along with the subject; it is a 
knowledge of apprehension or of presentation. We have 
seen that both science and common sense take this contrast — 
which exists only within experience — to hold between the 
individual knowing and an independent reality. 

The second kind of knowledge, that in which an idea or a 
series of propositions taken as a unity is referred to an exist- 
ence, implies the separateness of the knowledge possessed by the 
mind and the existence known. It is this kind of knowledge 
that is given us by ideas of things or by judgments about 
things. In Chapter V we traced the genesis of this contrast. 
We saw that it consisted of the distinction between two 
elements of which one is present and is called the idea, or 
content of the judgment, and the other is qualified as absent 
\ and is called the reality known. These two elements are 
cognitively relative in the sense that one means the other 
which it knows, while the other is known by the idea which 
means it. This cognitive contrast between idea and thing, 
in which the idea is qualified as present while the thing is 
qualified as absent yet meant by the idea, is the basis of 
knowledge which is not intuitional. The idea means the 
thing; it is the idea of the thing (which are two ways of stating 
the same fact), but this does not imply an existential relation 
between them. In truth, the thing known is regarded always 
as independent, for its existence and nature, of the idea which 



272 CRITICAL REALISM 

* 'means" it and gives knowledge of it. The thesis which I shall 
seek to maintain is that this second kind of knowledge furnishes 
the basis for knowledge referred to existents which are not in 
the field of the individuars experience. This thesis furnishes 
the epistemological foundation for a mediate realism. 

We have seen that Mr. Russell scorns the supposition that, 
ideas can furnish knowledge of things. ' ' The relation of mind,i 
idea, and object, on this view, is utterly obscure, and, so far 
as I can see, nothing discoverable by inspection warrants the 
intrusion of the idea between the mind and the object.** 
(Aristotelian Society, Pf(9c^^(iwg5, 1910-11, p. 119.) Mr. Stout 
agrees with him on this point and bases his position on the 
impossibility of explaining truth and error unless reality 
itself is the immediate object of thought. {Ihid, p. 189.) I 
do not see that they have succeeded very well with their 
intuitionalistic views, and I believe that the problem of truth 
and error solves itself when ideas are admitted. To the state- 
ment of Mr. Russell,^ I can only reply that the distinction 
between ideas and things is an empirical one which everybody 
is aware of. Thus Professor Dewey analyzes out the con- 
trast — the idea which is cognitional and the thing which it 
means. For instance, I have an idea of the Louvre, an idea 
which means the Louvre. The Louvre is absent while the 
idea is present. The denotation of the term ''Louvre'* is 
thus given by the object which my idea means. When I 
assert that the Louvre has a side facing the Seine, I do not 
ordinarily realize that this is my judgment about the Louvre, 
a building existent in Paris ; I ' think of the Louvre and see, 
as it were, that it has a side facing the Seine. In the preced- 
ing treatment of denotation, we saw that logic is founded on 
this common-sense outlook; and it is this which Mr. Stout 
supports on the foundation of inspection. But in my more 
reflective moments, I repudiate the presence-in-absence of the 
Louvre and hold that I have an idea of the Louvre (an idea 
which means the Louvre) and that I believe that this idea is 

1 In The Problems of Philosophy, Mr. Russell asserts that Berkeley had the right to say 1 
that "thought of a tree must be in our minds." So far as I can gather from the context, he I 
uses the word * 'thought" as synonymous with idea. I am not quite certain what Mr. Russell | 
means by "thought." Common sense and logic and psychology mean by it an idea-object or I 
concept. If this is what Mr. Russell means, the statement that we are not aware of anything | 
between the "mind" and the object is refuted. 



ii 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 273 

true. This idea is expressed in the assertion which I have 
made. Or, to put the same analysis in a different form, I 
make a judgment, assent to a proposition which is the object 
of my thought, and then interpret this judgment by means of 
interpretants which make expHcit the object about which I 
am judging. I shall assume in the rest of the argument that 
men do possess the empirical distinction between a cognitional 
idea and the thing which it means. (See the excellent article 
by Dewey entitled, ''The Experimental Theory of Knowl- 
edge," Mind, Vol. XXXI.) 

The next question we must ask concerns the status of such 

a cognitional idea. Professor Dewey asserts that *'from a 

strictly empirical point of view, the smell which knows is no 

more merely mental than is the rose known.'* It is time 

I that the scandalously inadequate treatment of the terms 

j ''mind'' and "mental" ceased. For instance, Mr. Russell 

i admits that "the word 'mental' is one which, so far as I know, 

has no well-defined meaning." {Mind, Jan., 1913, p. 78.) 

How can we hope to solve problems in theory of knowledge 

', unless we work out definite meanings! 

] In the preceding chapters we analyzed several definite 
^meanings, which we shall now seek to apply. The meaning 
: of the word "mental" is, first, a function of the point of view of 
, the psychologist. It signifies the psychical as a state of mind. 
I Psychology, as a special science, deals with consciousness as 
i something of which the individual is introspectively conscious, 
; while the external sciences are supposed to study the physical. 
I At least, this is the meaning which custom has assigned to the 
\ psychical or merely mental. I do not believe that the psy- 
:i chologist of the present day is quite certain what he means by 
the psychical. The mental is, next, the mind as opposed to 
the objects known. This is the epistemological meaning 
of the term. Unfortunately, the immediate realist takes the 
i first meaning of knowledge literally. The object known is 
supposed to be present to the mind even when it is non-mental. 
We saw that this sense of knowing is founded on a contrast, 
within the field of the individual's experience, which is expe- 
rienced as one between the individual as knowing and the 
object known. This contrast is left vague by common sense. 



2U CRITICAL REALISM 

and the epistemologist who tries to investigate it gets either 
a subject-self inseparable from the object side, or not-self 
(Bradley, Ward, and the idealists generally), or a mysterious 
act of apprehension, or consciousness (Moore, Russell, and 
the immediate realists). But we have shown that this distinc- 
tion is within the field of experience. Thus the epistemological 
mental is a subspecies of the mental. 

A third meaning of the term is that indicated by Professor 
Dewey. An idea as an object of thought is mental in so far as 
it exercises an intellectual function. Thus a concept is mental 
in so far as it is thought of as mediating knowledge of things, 
although it is an object of our thinking. But an object of 
thought when so used can be qualified by reflection as personal. 
We have tried to show that reflection cannot escape such a 
result. It is my idea; and the reason for this qualification is 
the personal character of ideation. I have found by inter- 
course with my fellows that the idea of a supposedly common 
and independent thing which I cherish is different from that 
cherished by others and that this difference is explicable in 
terms of my past experience. The personal quale enters and 
forever after attaches itself to ideas of things. This, like 
truth, is a reflective meaning. The result is a contrast between 
my idea and the thing which is common and independent. 
But the very motives which have convinced us that the 
idea-object is personal have forced us to connect it existentially 
with the rest of the field of experience. Hence the idea-object 
is mental in the fourth and most inclusive sense. This fourth 
meaning is the one which I have taken such pains to distinguish 
from the psychical in the subjectivistic interpretation of that 
term. It is within the mental in this larger sense that all the 
other contrasts arise. 

But we must distinguish between two kinds of knowledge- 
of. There can be no doubt that we possess knowledge of 
thing-experiences. While we are resting at the level of 
Natural Realism, we employ the contrast between the presence 
of things and ideas of them when they are absent. Again, the 
distinction between acquaintance-with and knowledge-about 
is an empirical one which everyone recognizes. The empirical 
realism of certain recent writers is based on the fact that this 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 275 

distinction has significance within experience and involves no 
transcendence. Knowledge-about is more conceptual than 
acquaintance-with, and it is soon realized that the presence 
of the object in its perceptual form does not give this knowledge 
which science emphasizes. The artist, on the other hand, is 
primarily interested in the knowledge-about which terminates 
satisfactorily upon the knowledge given by acquaintance-with. 
At this point a parting of the ways is imminent. It is time 
for the epistemologist to realize that the level of Natural 
Realism has been outgrown and that science possesses a 
selected sort of knowledge-about which claims to be valid of 
existents, which, as such, cannot enter the field of the individ- 
ual's experience, but which control the construction of thing- 
experiences and determine the data collected by the scientist. 
When the scientist asserts that this table has a certain size 
relative to a meter-stick, is made of wood of a certain texture, 
which is composed of cells, which themselves have a peculiar 
structure, and so on, he is asserting knowledge about the table 
as an existent independent of his mind. How must we 
interpret this knowledge ? So far as the form of the proposi- 
tions is concerned, there is no difference between these judg- 
ments and those of common sense. If you ask the scientist 
what table he is judging about, he will usually reply, ''The 
one I see in front of me." But we have seen how ambiguous 
this answer is. ''The table I see" may mean that I am able 
to intuit a physical thing, or it may mean that the physical 
table is causally connected with my present percept or thing- 
experience. In the first instance, I occupy the standpoint of 
Natural Realism and believe that my thing-experience is the 
table ; in the second instance, I believe that my thing-experience 
is controlled by the physical thing and that there is thus a 
one-to-one correspondence between them. This one-to-one 
correspondence is unique and is built up around the body. 
The microcosm of mind and the macrocosm of reality are like 
universes which radiate from the same centre. Thus the 
denotation in the one selects existents in the other without 
essential readjustment. It is for this reason that the judg- 
ments of common sense do not need to have their form changed 
when they are interpreted by science. It is also the reason 



2 76 CRITICAL REALISM 

why science, although its outlook is that of mediate realism, 
is not always aware of it. In his moments of placid naivete 
the scientist will inform you that matter is that which he 
feels. 

The difference between Natural Realism and critical 
realism does not lie in the form of the judgment, for that 
remains of necessity the same. We have seen how realistic 
is logic — -a characteristic which has always bothered idealism. 
The natural realist, as well as the critical realist, believes 
that he is thinking of something which the subject-term 
denotes and that he is making assertions about this thing. 
But the critical realist goes further and defines scientific 
knowledge of the physical world as knowledge about that which 
can never be literally within the field of an individual's 
experience. Knowledge consists of assertions in regard to 
behavior, structure, and relations which we cannot help 
making and referring to an existent corresponding to the 
thing-experience which it causally controls. Thus critical 
realism employs the logical structure built up by Natural 
Realism, but goes a step further as the result of the contrast 
between percept and physical thing. 

We are at last in a position to consider the question of the 
relation of mind, idea, and thing. Within the individual's 
experience the only difference between idea and thing is one 
of function. Both are objective; but the idea means the thing, 
and the thing is known by the idea which '' means '' it. On the 
other hand, we ordinarily assume that the reality itself is the 
object of our thinking. This is the basis of denotation. The 
word denotes that which it leads us to think about. We have, 
then, the subject-object structure within our experience, and 
no idea intervenes between. It is to this fact that Russell and 
Stout refer when they assert that ideas do not come between 
the mind, or the subject, and the object. True; but other 
reasons may lead us to judge that the object of our thought is 
not actually the thing which we take it to be. When reflection 
forces us to adopt this position, we may call the object on which 
our thought terminates an idea in order to distinguish it from 
the existent which cannot be present. It is our idea, or 
concept, of the existent, yet it is the object of our thought. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 277 

Mr. Stout finds this view indefensible because it seems to him 
to involve the impossibility of something owing its whole 
being to its relation to something else. (Aristotelian Society, 
Proceedings, 1910-11, p. 187.) But this objection is founded 
on a radical misunderstanding. An object of thought is not 
experienced as dependent on the thought. The object is 
qualified as of a certain kind. Now, when it is refiectively 
qualified as an idea, its character is not changed, but its sphere 
of existence is. It is now considered mental but not dependent 
on our thought of it. Logically speaking, an idea is just as 
objective as any other object of thought. 

Those who hold that ideas cannot be the objects of thought 
in judgment do so for another reason as well. Once separate 
real being and being for thought, say they, and it is impossible 
to explain truth and error. Let us see whether this dictum is 
justified. 

Two questions must be distinguished from the start. 
The first is : What do we mean by truth and its opposite, error ? 
The second is : What is the criterion by means of which we 
judge that any particular belief, judgment, or idea is true or 
false? These questions are at least relatively separable. 

The truth we are concerned with is the truth of our beliefs 
and propositions. Hence we shall not speak of the Truth 
with a capital and identify it with Reality. Such a tran- 
scendental or metaphysical truth is often contrasted with the 
inadequacy of our conception of it. It is evident that the 
assumption here is that something which transcends our 
experience is true in its own right and that it thus furnishes 
a measure of the degree of truth of our halting and finite 
knowledge. I see no good reason why such an independent 
reality should be called the Truth. Certainly, no solution of 
the problem of truth is possible while the term is used in two 
senses. Try as we will, confusion inevitably results. For 
the realistic, non-idealistic system which we have developed in 
these pages, there is no ground for a Transcendental Truth, 
so we shall quietly omit all identification of truth and reality. 

Truth is, then, a reflective qualification of those ideas, 
beliefs, and judgments which we regard as giving us knowledge 
about some sphere of reality. Its opposite is error, or falsity. 



278 CRITICAL REALISM 

We saw that the supposition of knowledge comes first genet- 
ically and analytically. We believe or judge or have ideas and 
we consider these cases of knowledge-of . But we find that we 
are mistaken frequently enough when the affair comes to the 
test. The result is reflective comparison within experience 
between the object which we meant to characterize and the 
characterization which we had before our minds. Such 
reflection has its birth in disappointment; therefore, we may 
say that error as a meaning logically precedes that of truth. 
As the consequence of our unpleasant experience of knowl- 
edge-of, which failed to agree with the field to which it 
pointed, we are led to realize that we are not infallible and 
that that which we take to be knowledge is not knowledge. 
To express this discovery, the term error is used. But the 
very characterization of some knowledge-of as erroneous 
implies that other examples of knovdedge-of are not erroneous 
and the contrast-meaning ''truth" grows up to describe these. 
Naturally, we desire our knowledge to be true and not false. 
The premium is placed on truth, and it becomes a meaning 
attachable to what claims to be knowledge in anticipation of 
the test which alone would completely assure us. Hence, the 
question. Is it true or is it false? is theoretically present in 
adult experience along with every belief or judgment or idea. 
But our experience is not only a growing one; it is also a 
conserving one. Many ideas and beliefs have been tested 
over and over again, so that trueness is attached to them. 
These ideas and beliefs are like coins which have stamped 
upon them a mark assuring their genuineness. We may say, 
then, that truth is a meaning which grows up within experi- 
ence to characterize cases of knowledge-of which have made 
good their claim. Human nature being what it is, this mean- 
ing is often attached to beliefs and ideas which will not stand 
a complete test. Since its application is premature, it must 
frequently be removed and its opposite reluctantly attached. 
The conclusion we have come to is that truth is a meaning 
applied to cases of knowledge when these have been tested. 
It means that this idea or judgment is an instance of knowledge. 
Now, the usual theories of truth have neglected this connection 
and have sought a definition of truth apart from the nature of 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 279 

knowledge-of . It seems to me that much of the misunder- 
standing which has fed recent controversies is due to the 
neglect of this relation. For instance, the coherence theory 
has grown up on the palpable fact that any theory or belief 
is in part judged by its harmony with* other theories and 
beliefs which have already been accepted as true. This is 
certainly one of our usual ways of testing ideas and beliefs 
which have no adequate immediate test. We believe that ideas 
which are true must be coherent. This belief is founded on 
the principle of non-contradiction, which is a law of our thought. 
But it does not follow from this belief that a system, because it 
is coherent, must, therefore, be true. That would be an 
example of false conversion. If not, we cannot treat coherence 
as a universal sign of truth and, therefore, as a part of its 
definition. We are forced to discard coherence as a theory 
of truth, although we may retain it as one of the criteria of 
particular ideas and hypotheses. It may be of interest to 
note that this conclusion turns us aside from the strange 
leap into an Absolute Experience which is usually made by 
the advocates of the coherence theory. Let us glance at an 
example of the leap to which I refer. 

In his study entitled The Nature of Truth, Mr. Joachim 
points out that the coherence which the theory has in mind 
is not that of formal logical consistency. **The systematic 
coherence, therefore, in which we are looking for the nature 
of truth, must not be confused with the consistency of formal 
logic. A piece of thinking might be free from self-contradic- 
tion, might be consistent and valid as the formal logician 
understands those terms, and yet it might fail to exhibit that 
systematic coherence which is truth." (p. 76.) As I under- 
stand formal logic, it does not concern itself with the question 
of truth, but with that of validity of inference. In contrast to 
bare intuition of truths and their consequences and to the 
ideal of formal consistency, we have put forward the ' ' relative 
self-dependence" of the organized whole of a science. But 
Joachim swerves suddenly aside from this line of approach, 
which has relevance to human truth because it stresses the 
growth of human knowledge, and we hear of a significant whole 
which is *'an organized individual experience, self-fulfilling 



2bO 



CRITICAL REALISM 



and self-fulfilled/' But '* there can be one and only one such 
experience; or only one significant whole, the significance of 
which is self-contained in the sense required'' {ibid.y p. 78). 
It is evident that we have left behind human experience and 
truth as these develop in science. But science concerns itself 
with knowledge about a reality which it does not literally 
include. Hence, it can never be self-sustaining. In other 
words, the metaphysical theory of coherence finds no ground 
in the truth of human knowledge. Logical truth with its 
dualistic implications is alien to Transcendental Truth. One 
must praise Mr. Joachim for his evident sincerity and at the 
same time grieve that he does not see the implications of his 
argument. We have here a beautiful example of the mingling 
of logic and metaphysics and of the confusion which results 
from it. 

Another theory of the meaning of truth which has much in 
its favor and many admirers is that of correspondence. Does 
truth consist in some form of correspondence between ideas 
and beliefs and reality? We have said that knowledge-of 
does involve an agreement between ideas and that which the 
ideas mean. The kind and degree of agreement is set by the 
idea which knows. Suppose that when I am absent I have 
an idea of a picture — a copy of *'The Concert/' by Giorgione, 
which hangs in my study; this idea means the object hanging 
on the wall. Its truth concerns the agreement of the salient 
features of the idea-object with the corresponding features of 
the object which I later experience. The one fits on, harmon- 
izes with, that which it means when the picture again comes 
into view. We then say that it was a true idea. Now we 
all know what such a harmony or agreement is. It exists 
when we pass from one object (the idea) to the other (the 
thing) without a necessary correction of the idea. ''Trueness" 
or *' truth" is the meaning which expresses to us the fact of this 
agreement. When applied in anticipation, it stands for our 
conviction that the idea does contain knowledge of the thing 
of which it claims knowledge. Such a correspondence, which 
can be empirically tested, is open to none of the objections 
ordinarily urged against the correspondence theory. The 
reality is only momentarily absent and can again be present. 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 



2«I 



It is evident, also, that truth cannot consist in a static relation 
between idea and thing, since ''knowledge," which is the 
more elemental term, does not. 

But the situation which we sketched above is a very simple 
one. The idea is true so far as it goes, but it very often does 
not claim to go very far. Suppose, however, I assert that this 
picture was painted by Giorgione. My idea is very complex 
and can be expressed adequately only by a proposition such 
as, "The picture in the Pitti Gallery called 'The Concert' 
was painted by Giorgione." I denote an object and make an 
assertion about it. What I assert is knowledge about the 
picture and can be tested only by the external and the internal 
evidence. If this evidence does not agree with the supposition, 
I judge that the proposition which expressed my idea about 
the picture is erroneous; it is in that case not knowledge and 
not true. Now the harmony or lack of harmony of an idea 
or proposition with the evidence or facts is an empirical matter 
in no wise mysterious. Decisions of this character are made 
every day in science and in historical investigation. The 
relation of the available facts and the idea, which may be a 
theory, is not one of copying, but of tested harmony. 

We may say, then, that, just as knowledge is an achieve- 
ment of the mind involving no transcendence of the mind in 
any literal sense, so truth is a human affair. It is a critical 
affirmation of knowledge. The tests of knowledge are those 
of truth. In order that we may see this more clearly, let 
us confine ourselves to knowledge of nature. At the level of 
Natural Realism, I distinguish between my ideas of University 
Hall and University Hall itself. I ask whether my ideas are 
true, i.e., whether they give me the knowledge they claim to 
give. I test these ideas of mine by an actual perception of the 
building. If they agree with this perception, I assert that 
the ideas were true, i.e., they gave me knowledge. But if it 
is scientific knowledge which I wish to obtain, I realize that the 
perception is only a part of the means. My knowledge must 
consist of propositions which are referred to an existent. I 
must allow this existent to control my percepts and data 
according to adequate methods. If these harmonize with the 
propositions, I assert that the latter are true. It is evident 



2»2 



CRITICAL REALISM 



that here, as elsewhere, the tests are within experience, although 
they involve a control of experience by that which is outside. 

I should like to stress the fact that not all ideas or proposi- 
tions claim to give knowledge about that which is extra-experi- 
ential. When my ideas claim to give me knowledge of the 
world only as it appears to me, the way to test them is to go 
again to immediate experience. In this way, I am able to 
compare the idea-object with the object which it claims to 
know. What is this but correspondence ? But it is an empiri- 
cal correspondence. The test is of this face-to-face sort. 
There can be a comparison. At the level of mediate realism, it 
is realized that such a comparison between physical existents 
and propositions which are supposed to contain knowledge is 
impossible. The test is immanent and concerns the harmony 
between data and propositions based on them according to 
inductive and deductive methods. When we realize the 
difference between the knowledge-references in these two 
cases, we see that, while correspondence may be the correct 
ideal of one, it is not that of the other. This conclusion agrees 
with our decision that the mental can know the non-mental. 

Our conclusion can be brief. We have, I hope, simplified 
the problems of knowledge and truth and extricated them from 
the misleading contexts which various schools of philosophy 
have thrown around them. We have shown how Natural 
Realism passes naturally to critical realism through empirical 
motives which burst the old shell. As a matter of fact, we 
have at times over-simplified Natural Realism and given 
it a unity and internal harmony which it does not possess in 
actuality. I hope I have made it evident that critical realism 
exists already preformed, as it were, in Natural Realism, that 
is, in the plain man's, outlook. Our task has been to clarify it 
and make it conscious of itself. Knowledge is an achievement 
and possession of minds as these have evolved under the 
stimulus of their environment. As a meaning, knowledge 
precedes truth, which is a reflective deepening of the sense 
of knowledge in the light of an awakened doubt. The 
criteria of truth are, therefore, the same as those of knowledge. 
Truth is thus accepted and tested knowledge. To say that 
an idea is true is to say that it is actually a case of knowledge 



TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE 283 

as it claims to be. Truth is knowledge triumphant instead 
of knowledge militant; yet it is knowledge, as can be seen 
when we combine the two terms and speak of true knowl- 
edge. Knowledge militant is opposed to ignorance, and 
knowledge triumphant to error. 



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